Novastralix

Hunter
Kadrus, Sita System, Imperial Thaull, Ordinal Empire of Thaull, 6780

“All Lands and Kingdoms,
Empires and Freedoms,
All Peoples and Kinds,
All Dazzling Finds,
These are yours, Bloody Hunter.

All Eyes shall Look,
Read your glories,
From fabled book,
Like ancient stories.
These shall be yours, Glorious Hunter.

All who are weak,
And strong,
Shall speak,
Your enrapturing song.
This shall be you, Mighty Hunter.

Carve in infinite glory,
With burnished steel,
Forever held story,
Know that it is real.
Be victorious, Young Hunter.”

These words were written in stone upon the pedestal, a statue of the ancient god, Xikooras, the fabled first Emperor. The fabled father who had born Thaull. The statue depicted the old god as a young warrior, beautifully rendered in the nude, holding a sword effortlessly at his side, a stoic face, a dead beast at his feet, a halo of the sun behind his head.
The old gods were hardly real anymore, not since the Lareshi shattered the illusion of mystical forces guiding Thaull to glory. But their worship remained very real, every act of violence an honor call to the Father. In many ways, even if Xikooras was never truly there, he still influenced a very living Thaull to another end.

Irasha felt the power of Xikooras course through himself, the might of the ancient Emperor lending him his will. Irasha hovered above the ground, the tips of his toes just inches from the stone, his arms held softly at his sides.
He was in the gardens, amongst the blue-leafed trees native to Thaull. This is where they came to meditate, Irasha and others, all Lions of the Empire. That was their title, Lord-Lions, special instruments of the Imperial military to enact the Emperor’s will.

Someone was coming, he could hear them, footsteps in the infinite distance. Someone you know, another like you, he brings news of the coming war. You will slaughter them.

Irasha’s eyes opened, they were green like cloudy emerald. His feet touched the ground, he breathed. Irasha bowed his head to the statue, a pointless gesture, but one every warrior did when they came here.
Irasha wrapped himself in a black silk robe, the red hammer of the Empire embroidered onto the back.

Drassas was approaching.

Drassas was Irasha’s partner and friend, another Lord-Lion like himself. Drassas was already in his armor; a most dull grey armored bodysuit, with extra ceramic armor plating in glossy white around the upper arms and chest. He was not wearing the angular helmet that came with the set, not yet anyway, instead he was carrying the helmet underneath his arm.

Drassas had dark blue eyes, the darkest Irasha had ever seen. His skin was a muddy red and he had a large scar running vertically from the bottom of his chin to his forehead, cross over his right eye. Drassas was missing his tusk on the same side.

Irasha smiled, Has it begun?

“No, ‘fraid not,” Drassas said, “but we do have practice. So suit up.”

Irasha followed, leaving behind the gentle garden and the statue of Xikooras, the pair travelled to the armory, where the advanced suits they wore were kept.

“If feels like it’s been ages since they began planning this, and yet we still haven’t done it. Ithaxia didn’t feel like it took this long and we were there for damn near six years,” Irasha said.

Drassas smirked, “We didn’t do a terrible lot in Ithaxia. Ithaxia really didn’t require our expertise.”
“We did some missions, just not special requirement missions.”

“Does that really count?”

“We did want the Empire required of us. Of course it did.”

“I guess.”

The conservation trailed off until they arrived at the armory, and Irasha began putting the suit on his body. A long and complicated process that required some of Drassas’s assistance.

“What’s the assignment?”

“Some Vortans thinking they are doing some weapons testing for some company that doesn’t actually exist, they think they are going to be fighting some droids. We are going to show them they aren’t; Central wants to record the results.”

“What’s Central want to do with the Vortans?”

Drassas smiled, he had a gold tooth, it was engraved with a skull.

---

Lieutenant Nagan stared out into the forest, from just above a sandbag emplacement. Alien trees, alien sky, alien animals, an alien world. Why couldn’t they just do the testing back on Keriax? The lieutenant flipped onto his back and dipped back behind the sandbags, back into cover. He took account of his men, ten in total. Sahjas, Mhanan, Hohen, Pellex, Shawot, Monix, Igan, Therixin, Howast, and Chenan.

It had been an hour since they had been last attacked, a wave of droids, the cheapest of cheap kind. Cheaper than any Azha produced, a feat Nagan previously thought impossible. Something was wrong, in a way he couldn’t quite place his finger on. The Vortan lieutenant stuck his head up again, the tree line was seemingly clear. He brought his binos just to be sure, a sweep through visible, thermal, infrared, UV, nothing.

“Sahjas, read me back the mission intel brief that Chagasai provided us,” Nagan order, Sahjas was a corporal and his second in command; Chagasai Arms Incorporated was the name of the company that had brought them to Silar space.

Sahjas still had her helmet on, unlike many of her compatriots who had already discarded them in the boring heat of the day, “Droids will come in four wave, ascending in programming complexity. Fifth wave will include a nonstandard model for additional testing purposes. Waves will be staggered, with the next coming every ten minutes. Droids will be armed with less-than-lethal ammunition. That’s the full brief, sir.”

They had only faced three waves and yet no sign of the fourth.

“They say anything about any sort of delay, Corporal?” Nagan asked as he pointed at a small, tracked bot that Chagasai had sent along with them. Chagasai said it was for data gathering and so that the corporation knew where to send the droids, but Nagan was having doubts now.

“No sir, I don’t think they gave us any thing on communication protocols, sir.”

“See if you can get a line from them on that thing. I hope they didn’t cheap out like they did on the fvcking droids they got us fighting.”

Sahjas moved the tracking bot, crawling on his stomach to avoid any danger of losing cover. The bot was simple and unsurprisingly cheap. The hardiest thing on it was the tracked wheels, the body built on top of the tracks was made of thin plastic and flimsy aluminum. She was sure if she punched it hard enough she could break it in half. There was a port on the side of it though, maybe she could patch in; it was the same model of port the Vortan Armed Forces used.

“I’m gonna try something, LT,” she yelled.

“Try quick, my stomach is churning with all the heebie-jeebies I am getting.”

“Yes, sir.”

Sahjas produced an adapter cable and hooked in her Battle Informational Pad on her wrist to the tracking bot. Sure enough, she was getting geodata, weather reports, atmospheric conditions, coordinates. Nothing out of the ordinary.

“Nothing, LT. I’ll continuing digging though, see if I can find something.”

“No droids?” Nagan asked, “What about a contact from Chagasai?”

“No dice.”

Nagan slumped his head against the sandbag. Something was wrong, something was terrible wrong. He was going to kill himself. He was going to duck up and kill himself. He was going to stand up straight and die.

Blood dribbled down from Nagan’s nose. He felt like standing and so he did.

“Sir?” Sahjas asked, she had noticed her commanding was standing all the way up, “Are you okay, sir?”

He was going to die. He was about to die. Nagan turned around to face the forest line, Sahjas pushed off her stomach onto to one knee, “Sir?”

The back of Nagan’s head exploded, a gush of blood, brains, and bits of bone sprayed out across the foxhole, followed a millisecond later by the sound of a distant gunshot.

Nagan’s body fell to the ground and Sahjas rushed to administer aid, but there was nothing to do. Nagan’s face was gone; the whole front of his head had been obliterated along with most of the back. Nagan was dead.

“HELMETS ON, HELMETS ON, TAKE COVER,” Sahjas yelled at the top of her lungs as she dived to the sandbag wall, “IDENTIFY WHERE THAT FIRE CAME FROM. WE HAVE A SNIPER IN OUR MISSION AREA.”

Several dreadful seconds of silence passed as nothing happened.

“Anyone have eyes?” Sahjas yelled to her peers, the answers were null.

Sahjas glanced back at Nagan’s body, he had been facing the southwest before he died.

“Possible sniper AO southwest.”

Then Shawot stood up.

“Get down you idiot! Sniper!”Sahjas yelled, but it was for nothing. As soon as Shawot stood, she was dead. Shot through the head just like the lieutenant had been.
The Mhanan followed. And Therixin. All the same, stand, face the tree line, die.

“Sh!t, snipe’s a psion! I’m ordering a retreat, move to exfil,” Sahjas ordered.

Her remaining troops obeyed, abandoning the foxhole with express fury. Something nagged at her before she left though, the tracking bot. She levelled her rifle at it and dumped a mag; no one was going to track them.

The forest provided plenty of cover, but even still, she felt she and her squad were out in the open. Hell, she had never properly identified where the shots were coming from. After about a kilometer, they arrived at the exfil. The same spot they had landed at, the Chagasai shuttle that had brought them here was still on the ground, engines cold.

“Get it flying, double time.”

The Vortan soldiers boarded the corporate shuttle, none of the Chagasai crew that had flown them here were inside. Indeed it seemed as though she and her team were the only people to have ever been on this shuttle.

“This is a setup if I have ever seen one, Igan get us flying, ASAP,” Sahjas ordered as she took up watch position by the entrance ramp. Her fellow teammates took up similar positions in and around the base of the shuttle.

Igan obey as he moved into the shuttle cockpit, a section of the shuttle closed off on its own.

Sahjas waited but minutes seemed to pass quickly with little progress being made. She was getting impatient, Igan was a basic pilot but surely, he should have this piece of crap flying by now.

“Igan? What’s the hold up?” She hollered.

The door to the cockpit was jammed; she kicked at it but it didn’t budge. She let bullets doing the fixing before kicking again and that worked.
Inside was no better. Igan lay dead in the pilot’s chair, his throat slit.

“Fvck,” then she noticed the shimmer of the air out of the corner of her eye. Sahjas instinctively jumped back into the shuttle hallway as a hail of bullets came her way.

“HOSTILE ONBOARD, REPEAT HOSTILE ONBOARD.”

Sahjas ran back towards the shuttle ramp but the rest of her squad was already being slaughtered, the sniper had followed them and was proving to be successful in dispatching her team.

Sahjas turned around, her assailant had followed her into the hall, already decloaked. She recognized the armor; she recognized the insignia on the armor. A Lion of Thaull. She didn’t care, she didn’t want to die. She lifted her gun to fire, but she couldn’t pull the trigger. Why couldn’t she pull the trigger? Why should she want to pull the trigger? Sahjas had always wanted to die. It was good and right to die.

The Thaullen Lion didn’t waste his time nor his bullets, delivering a lone shot from his assault rifle to the Vortan’s brain. He moved on to exterminate the rest of the Vortan soldiers. He radioed to his partner once he was finished.

“Enemy combatants dispatched within shuttle interior, confirm all exterior targets terminated?”

“Confirmed, all target neutralized. Moving to rendezvous.”

Drassas sat on the shuttle ramp as he waited for Irasha to come in from the forest. The pair looked identical in their armor, the difference being Drassas had an assault rifle and Irasha had his sniper.

“You get any blood on you?” Irasha asked as he strode up.

Drassas shook his head, exaggerating the motion to get it across in his angular helmet, “No, but the one up in the cockpit was a real gusher, nearly did. What about you?”

“What do you think?” Irasha said as he pointed the barrel of his rifle towards the sky.

“I can splash some on you, and then at least your armor would have some color.”

“Speak for yourself; let’s go.”

Drassas stood and Irasha turned. A successful test.

---

Irasha sat cross legged in the garden again, sitting before the statue of Xikooras. Drassas had joined him this time, free of armor though.

“So, Emerald begins soon? Right?” Irasha asked.

“As soon as Partner G1 holds up their end of the bargain, at least that’s what the word from Central is,” Drassas explained, “Word is we are part of Vector Delivery 26, early in the op. And then I suspect they’ll have some other stuff for us. Maybe something fun other than delivering the malicious mail.”

“Malicious mail? Who talks like that?”

“Isn’t that what is? Hell, if Emerald goes over well, the Vorties won’t know what hit them until its too late and we got what we want.”

Irasha nodded, “Fair I suppose. Malicious mail. Guess it does got a nice ring to it.”

“See?”

Pestilence
Geneweaver Sanctum, Planet Dado, Orae System, 6780

To stitch. To sew. To snip. To stretch. To manipulate the threads of life that make up the tapestry of evolution in the grand work of creation. Such was the calling of the Geneweavers. Such was the calling of the greatest of them, the Primarch Mathis.

Tirelessly he always worked. Worked to better the Dynasty in whatever form or function could be devised in his labs. All things that the Dynasty stood upon, everything that made them who they were, was dependent on this work and the work of his order of Geneweavers, formed from the bioengineers and scientists that built the Great Charter the Empress presided over long before the Collapse. The Base Patterns of the Clone Legions that stood ready to fight for the glory of their Dynast masters? Limitless. Ordered. Honored. The genetically augmented crops that fed billions on worlds and outposts too barren to sustain themselves? The very work that has earned them the praise-filled worship that set the household of the Dynasty up as golden gods. The Dynasts themselves were Mathis and the Empress’ greatest work. Forms malleable and powerful, with superior minds and abilities rendered eternal with the genetic lineages safely kept by the Imperial Genebanks of the palace on Aenaeus.

On Dado, sister world of the throneworld in Orae, it was his domain and his sanctuary where he did most of his works and indulged in experiments. Where he also worked on that which was desired by others.

In the depths of the Sanctum, far below the ground and the mountains of the arctic continent of Dado, sister planet to the throneworld of in Orae, beneath countless labs and chambers where thousands of Geneweavers wove miracles of engineered evolution, the form of Mathis, immense with many legs and grasping hands, worked intricate instruments and consoles, specially bioengineered spinneret appendages weaving biomass together truly as though they were threads of fabric, aided by his mind and psionic power. There he did most of his works and indulged in experiments. Where he also worked on that which was desired by others.

“A virus indeed,” he lamented to himself as he worked over a complex instrument with a multitude of differing colored vials.

Child’s play. A poor use and display of his abilities, his drive. His artform. Had Ithena herself not bothered to deliver the commission, he would have ignored it. In some fashion he saw parts of himself in her, her drive to experiment in art and appreciation for everything about it, including the materials used. He set it in his mind to devise a new paint for her to use.

The process of the creation of the virus was hardly complex, especially for one such as him, and was completed within days. A targeted flu, infective, especially debilitating. Deadly after a time under circumstances. The most time consuming portion of it, however, was testing and observation. Beginning with small creatures at first, a simple rodent at first. The poor thing hardly lasted a few hours before it started to have troubles with respiration. Progressively larger subjects proved more resilient, but still only in a matter of a day. Finally, a captured target subject. A young male, confused and resilient. Snatched from the industrial district of the Nexus. A poor boy, he hardly lasted at least two days from exposure before he showed symptoms. For the needs of its total effects, he was deprived of care and allowed to expire, ending up choking on fluid built up in his lungs and his nasal passages.

Pleased with his work, yet still annoyed by the simplicity, he sent off the work with the simultaneously developed vaccine to its intended recipient.

At the Den
6780

Kalren’s voice caught in his breathing mask as the gargantuan sealed doors of their troop-shuttle opened to the Cheseita landscape. A toxic swirl of enveloping brown atmosphere flooded through the gap, permeating every inch of the ship’s interior until the difference in environments settled. Looking on ahead, he saw the tall, leering structures of Gedar surrounding them at a far distance; black-toned, they looked like quarry stone blocks arranged in patterns how a child might play with toy bricks. Small, slanted dark windows lined the middle points of the buildings, but beyond that they were featureless walls of concrete.

The air stung his eyes and irritated them, but this was normal. One of the physicians on the ship briefed him on the health effects of Cheseita’s atmosphere at Gallad’s insistence. It was explained that the feeling went away in time with exposure. He hoped that was true, but for now his eyes burned with a sensation like when he washed his face with recently purified water.

The immense scale of Gedar itself caused him to overlook a small gathering of figures at the foot of the shuttle. Some were standing in formation and others waiting. The ramp began to extend itself many meters to the ground, which gave Kalren plenty of time to consider his feelings.

Chiefly among them was anxiety. An anxious weight, simultaneously borne of anticipation and trepidation, clung to him and diseased his every thought. None of the structures of Gedar looked like home to him. None of it felt welcoming; he was somehow in the wilds now, feeling like a hapless prey animal looking into a predator’s den.

The ramp reached the ground at last, and Kalren watched as Gallad Renzer, the chosen commander of their expedition, went forward to the front ranks of thousands of loyal Sahymi soldiers. He stopped at the threshold, where the shuttle’s internals ended and the downward slope to Cheseita’s surface began. Is he having second thoughts? Kalren wondered with fear and amazement in the same breadth.

Then Gallad stepped forward, and it almost felt that the shuttle itself shook as the house troops on both sides of Kalren moved in lock-step, slowly filtering out of the ship and down the ramp.

“Are you waiting for an invitation, son?” a voice from his side spoke. Kalren recognized it immediately as belonging to Luke Wehto, one of his father’s personal ostiaries. His lord-father had been cautious about the prospect of sending him to Cheiseita. He was his only son, he said, and spent almost the entire cycle lecturing Kalren about what to expect. What he should anticipate and how he should behave. He carried the legacy of House Sahymi with him, his father urged. Ostiary Wehto would follow to protect him personally, his father directed, and the urgings and lessons went on until Kalren was tired and feared he’d be exhausted for the morning when they left. It mattered little, it was explained: he’d have plenty of time to sleep on the journey.

He responded with action, walking forward with Luke at his side as they joined the center, wide-spaced ranks of flag-bearers and sergeants moving with the formations. Descending the ramp opened up the view of Gedar that had been previously obstructed by the hull of the shuttle. He swung his head wide at both angles, surveying the cityscape.

The spaceport was a gargantuan plaza that stretched on all sides beyond what a man might find comfortable to walk, easily fitting the twelve troop-shuttles he and his house-loyals traveled in. It made them seem small and not at all like the leviathan giants they were, capable of ferrying tens of thousands of soldiers through space. The ships flanking them were depositing their complements with the same speed. Kalren was amazed: Even with the size of this legion numbering in the hundreds of thousands, the grounds of this spaceport could easily fit and muster out ten times that number.

The towers ahead revealed themselves now to be part of a large complex, which Kalren imagined to be the seat of power for the city. It was where the castellans that ruled over this world presided, and now it would be their home for a time. The estate was the largest single building in the settlement, with all else around them in the distance only a few stories tall at best.

Ahead, the gathering of figures he had seen earlier were easier to spot now. Among their numbers were a few hundred in armored-exosuits not unlike the ones he and the legion wore. At the front stood others in dress uniforms, all wearing the same filtration mask that covered their lower-face. A dozen drummers stood towards the rear striking a rhythm against their skins, but the marching steps of thousands of soldiers formed a beat of its own and drowned out any purpose of having them.

Gallad waited at the front as the formations of troops broke off into squared sections divided by unit and distinction, and the banners of House Sahymi fluttered occasionally in the slow wind that permeated the open grounds. Each soldier carried only his rifle with him, slung identically over the left shoulder. In the field they usually carried more, Kalren remembered from some of his talks with Hul Wellard—rucksacks, explosive devices, riggings adorned with communication and monitoring equipment were typical, but at the moment they carried none of it.

Kalren and Luke joined Gallad at the front of the formation, just as the men ahead of them arrived. Unmistakably, he could guess who was a local to Cheseita and who came from Karandi or elsewhere from their appearance alone. Those Karandians among them, like a few of the drummers and most of the guards, had darker complexions not unlike Kalren’s own. The Chesians were much fairer of skin, with tones only a few hues darker than the color of milk.

“Sirdar Renzer, we welcome you,” the man at the front, a pale-faced Chesian with hazel eyes, said. He was short, rounded and with broad, square shoulders. Kalren noted the formality of his term: clearly he hoped for a good impression. “I am Bree Dah. I am the chief-functionary of Gidar, so I am at your service.”

“Then you are under my command now,” Gallad followed. He was half a decade older than Kalren, but his voice carried a weight that could’ve been mistaken for a lifetime of service. “There will be a revising of staff. I will need a list of all residents personally employed to the estate.”

Bree offered a bow. “Of course, Sirdar. It will be done,” he said swiftly, and then added, “we heard about the Castellan’s… unfortunate retirement. I offer the condolences of every subject in Gidar.”

“You should be offering condolences to your master, Joram Sahymi,” Gallad retorted. “He is the one you have most offended with the ineffectual management of this world. Consider yourself lucky that the weight of responsibility has fallen on Castellan Bramas’ shoulders. Unlike him, I will brook no failure or insubordination.”

“Then we are entirely at your service, Sirdar,” he said.

Gallad took only a moment to consider his response: “I want blueprints of the city and its walls. Information on every garrison and security post, here and across the planet. You will provide a report on Sody-Eegen and the situation there, as well as any other problem area that we may not know about. I want a detailed report on this insurrection; profiles of any suspected ringleader or accomplice.”

Bree nodded swiftly in response. Kalren was unsurprised by the severe tone in which Gallad spoke. He was well-informed of the failures of the planetary government, though he was curious how it manifested. Either it was corruption or ineptitude, and as his father would say, either was equally dangerous but both together were deadly.

Gallad flicked his eyes to the side for only a moment and Kalren winced, knowing that the attention was falling on him now. “This is the honored son of your lord, Kalren Sahymi. He will be partaking in this inspection, which I hope shows the severity and importance in which my lord places on Cheseita and its continued operations.”

The Chesian servant looked directly at Kalren now. It was clear he was studying his features, his appearance. As the only son of his father, Kalren held his breath and wore a stoic look on his face. Their eyes met for a moment, Bree’s moving from left to right like he was searching for something. He returned his gaze to Gallad and offered a deeper, more profound bow than before, which the entourage behind him echoed in kind.

“I’m sorry. A thousand apologies. I was not aware of my lord’s son’s attendance. I would have prepared a better ceremony,” he uttered in a hurried, reverential voice.

“Don’t worry about that now,” Gallad insisted.

Kalren found himself reaching for his own voice: “There is no offense done. You couldn’t have known.”

“Let’s get inside,” Gallad followed, “this mask is starting to chafe.”

“Of course, Sirdar. I can send for cars to—”

“We’ll walk.” Gallad ordered.

The entourage turned and began to move out, Kalren looking on at the long walk ahead of them to the complex’s entrance. They were silent at first, until Gallad activated his communicator and began directing orders to the troops, delegating out responsibilities to the numerous mushir-generals assigned to the legion. He stole a look behind them back to the shuttles, where cargo and vehicles were beginning to be ferried down the ramps.

All of this was of immense interest to Kalren. He had never seen the army of his father in such a state before. He practiced shooting a handful of times with Hul and his father’s other men, but this was well beyond. His only experience of the military was seeing the household guard muster out, and they numbered in easily countable ranks. His lessons—the things he read and studied—mentioned the scale of battles of the past, and told of actions conducted by the Commonwealth and its Sentinel Order. To see a fraction of that scale in person, to catch a glimpse of how their ancestors might have operated, was stunning. Only now could House Herigen hope to assemble forces like the old records.

His mind went back to the ride over. Like his father said, he would have plenty of time to rest then, and he was right: the trip through to Cheseita was just over seven cycles—a standard week. He requested plenty of reading material; notes on Cheseita and its environment; the history of settlements there; treatise on the specifics of intersystem travel; all of it he expected to be too much to read, but Kalren found the voyage remarkably boring. There was little to do on a starship beyond watch the crew work, and Luke was quick to remind him that it was in their best interest to not bother them. So he stayed and read, committing to memory as much information as he could about the planet.

It was Kalren’s first time off-world. Four years ago, when Zoyir Herigen died and his son took power, his father had to make the months’ long trip to the Alkeet System, where he would pay respects and restate his fealty. Kalren was supposed to go too, and everything was arranged until the very last minute when he suddenly decided otherwise. He still didn’t know why his father changed his mind, but he was angry at him for a time; Hul said that these feelings would pass, and they did, but Kalren scarcely believed that he would truly leave Karandi until the moment his shuttle lifted from the surface.

The doors to the estate were a pair of large, self-sealing vaults, and the first layer opened as Bree input a code on a keypad by the entrance. “We’ll have to update codes, Sirdar,” he said, and the entourage entered while the mixed guard broke rank to stand aside, only a few of Gallad’s men following them in. Kalren looked around, seeing that the chamber followed the basic principle of an airlock, and a series of humming vents collected and purified the air.

Opening, Kalren was glad to see the interior clean of the swirling muck outside. It was concrete, much in the same way as the exterior, but the hallway was well-lit and went left and right to stairs leading upwards. More Chesian servants were inside, dressed in plain gray uniforms. They lined both sides of the hall, and all eyes were on the newcomers as the chamber closed behind them.

“You may remove your masks now,” Bree explained, reaching up at his throat and unclasping the seal, pulling it off. Gallad followed, and then the rest including Kalren imitated their actions. “The air here is purified and treated by our system before it’s ventilated. It removes the toxicants.”

“Are there air systems like this in all the homes, Bree Dah?” Kalren found himself asking.

“Please, call me just Bree, Master Kalren.”

“Then call me just Kalren.” He offered in kind. “My question?”

“Yes… every home here has a similar system, though you will find that ours is monitored more carefully. Exposure to the untreated air is fatal after a few minutes.”

Kalren looked around at the many servants watching them, “Then it must be very dangerous to live here.”

“Oh yes, it is,” Bree remarked as he turned around. “Any number of breakdowns can prove quite… disastrous. We spend much on maintenance, you will see in the report,” he said to Gallad, then to Kalren continued, “but do not worry. The Castellan’s estate is monitored by a carefully chosen team. Our system has redundancies. Very smart, no?”

“Where is your operations room?” Gallad asked while wearing a frown. Clearly he was unimpressed by Bree.

“It’s upstairs, not far from here. There’s a nice view of the country too. Are you not tired, Sirdar? And… young Master?” he asked. “I had intended to offer the Castellan’s room to you, Sirdar, but now I think I should offer it to my lord’s son.”

“We’ll worry about rooms later, I didn’t come here to sleep,” Gallad retorted, then turning to Kalren and Luke thought for a moment, adding, “Ostiary Wehto, accompany Kalren to the Castellan’s bedroom. Then you two join us at operations.”

Bree looked at them. “I’ll send a servant to show you the way,” he offered, and then signaled for one of the women at the side to lead them further down the hall. Though the exterior was a looming, dominating thing, the interior passageways of the estate were narrow and nondescript. Only cutouts along the wall holding the light fixtures offered any breakup in the monotony; no paintings or tapestries or decorum at all filled these halls.

“What’s your assessment so far, Luke?” Kalren asked, turning to look at the older guard. He followed the direction of his gaze forward, to where he was looking at the lower-half of the servant escorting them.

“My assessment?” he spoke up, looking at Kalren with stern eyes. He had a rough, textured face that Kalren recalled was bearded before their journey, but all men had to shave to wear the respiration masks.

“What do you think so far, I mean. Like: What do you think about Bree?”

Luke pursed his lips in thought for a second, then said, “He’s fat. He’s a sycophant. He likes his post and he wants to keep it.”

“I’m curious to hear his perspective on what’s going on. These mining camps are important to my father.”

Luke glanced over at him as they continued following the servant up the stairs into the rear of the estate. “You’re curious who’s more at fault, aren’t you?” he summed it up after a while, “you want to know if the blame falls on the Castellan or on people like Bree Dah.”

“I want to know if this is an organizational failure or not.”

“Many times it’s both. The Castellan was… clearly over his head and didn’t have the guts to manage here, but…” his voice lingered for a second, “these people have more in common with each other than they do you and your lord father. I don’t think you’d find many people here eager to walk over their own.”

Kalren looked at him. “Walk over them?” he remarked, “you make it sound like they’re slaves. Are they not paid, and are conditions not acceptable? If it wasn’t for us, nobody would be able to live here at all.”

Luke snorted in response, looking around for anything of interest in the hallway but still finding the same monotonous repetition as before. “I think you look at it from a perspective too far removed. Perhaps the people here should be grateful to your family, son, but they don’t know you. They have only their own problems, and clearly they thought they weren’t being addressed.”

“They should’ve presented their demands.”

“Maybe they did?” he shot back. “How’s to say that the Castellan didn't ignore grumblings back when they were only little complaints.” His words were interesting enough to Kalren, since he didn’t really know the depth of this disaster and how much the problems sat with Caro Bramas alone. “But it’s not easy to reach your lord father. A miner here? There’s a ladder: step after step after step after step, you follow?”

Kalren thought for a moment about all of what Luke said. It was certainly true that the average person had no direct means of reaching the ears of his father. He was sure had they managed that his father would have responded promptly and solved the concerns well before they became problems. The insurrectionists on Cheseita jumped the gun. Yet, as he tried to put himself in their position, he considered the words Luke said: the steps on the ladder. Each one was another manager, another administrator, another means of communication that could be brushed aside without concern.

“I hope to learn their concerns then,” Kalren said. “When I take power one day, I mean to listen to my subjects and hear them all.”

“Maybe you will, but I think you’ll find it not all that simple, sadly,” Luke said with a smirk.

The servant turned back at last as they reached an antechamber leading into the bedroom. “This is the Castellan’s apartments,” she said.

Inside was a different spectacle entirely compared to the rest of the estate so far. The walls were half-panneled in wood, with paintings and tapestries adorning them. Plants from Karandi and Cheseita added much-needed colors to it, and a central spherical chandelier loomed overhead, bathing the room in warm rays instead of the oppressive static lighting outside. The bed was very large, situated partially under the light fixture, and covered in green and floral-stitched blankets.

As Luke was the first inside, he searched around the bedroom for a moment. Kalren noticed that his hand was low by his waist, hovering near his holstered handgun. Did he really think an assassin would be hiding here? he wondered. At last, he turned around and gestured for him to enter.

Looking around, Kalren inspected the bedroom. He noticed a desk at the side along with an overhanging bookcase. There was a computer terminal, but tapping on it brought up a password request screen; they’d need to go through all of the Castellan’s files later. Instead he focused on the books. A small collection, he noticed, nothing like the library they had back home, but there were a few works that stood out. A Record on Phashian Commonwealth Charters caught his interest and he pulled it from the shelf, feeling the black hard-case of the text on his fingers. The device was simple to operate: he pinched his fingers at the side and rolled a small dial that sprung up the case to the requested page. All without touching the delicate text; all without risking skin oils ruining the paper.

“Have you found the explosive yet?” Kalren said with a lively smirk, hearing the Ostiary shuffling behind him and still looking over the room.

“Funny,” Luke grumbled, “you should take your safety more seriously. Your lord father wouldn’t appreciate such ease.”

“Do you really think they would risk attacking us now? I think Bree would consider the security of this estate to be his utmost responsibility,” he reasoned out loud. “If harm came to us here, the legion would surely slaughter them all.”

Luke grunted in response, walking around to the side of the room and throwing back some of the tapestries to look behind at the bare concrete surface. “You’ve never met a fanatic, then. Or somebody with nothing to lose. Besides…” he started, gazing back at Kalren, “they didn’t know you were accompanying us. They could’ve planned a strike against Renzer and it’s too late to call off now.”

Kalren quickly looked away, a blush of embarrassment on his face. Luke was certainly right here, without a doubt. He thought: I’m an unknown factor in all this, it’s true. Nobody expects me to be here, and any conspiracy to attack would have been made well in advance, anticipating a new commander and garrison. Not the son of Joram Sahymi himself.

“You’re right. Sorry,” he said, clasping the book together again and slotting it back into place.

“Don’t apologize,” Luke followed, having finished his surveying, “just remember what I said and take it to heart. Not all who would strike against you care about their own lives."

Finishing with the bedroom, the pair returned to the antechamber where the servant was, and Luke instructed her to take them to the operations room where Gallad awaited. It was a long but dull journey, the interesting decorum of the bedroom sorely missed as they returned to the drab monotone features.

They arrived in mid-conversation, with Gallad’s voice carrying through the thin doors that separated the room from the hallway.

“—this has been allowed to go on as long as it has! I intend to place an element at each work site along the Sody-Eegen. What is this position here?”

“It’s a central processing and refinement hub. They purify the minerals and separate off the slag and rock in preparation for shipping. It’s, ah-h-h… called Asvad Huf,” Bree explained.

“How does its size compare to the neighboring communities?”

“It’s among the largest settlements near the line. It has a direct travel route across the surface, with arterials that feed into the mines along the ridge.”

“Perfect. It will become the base of our local garrison in the region. We’ll establish a direct line of communication from here to there.” Gallad dictated, and looking up saw the door slide open and Kalren and Luke enter inside. “Here they are. Any trouble?”

“No.” Luke answered, stepping to the side and permitting Kalren to pass.

Stepping forward, he saw a large table almost dividing the room in half. On it was a visual representation of the Cheseita surface, with latitude and longitude marks. On the far side was an image of Gedar in good clarity—he could make out the central estate, the massive landing grounds looking like a stamp-mark on the surface, and the ring of walls surrounding the city. Where Gallad stood on the other side adjacent to Bree was the hundred kilometers long Sody-Eegen trench, dotted with the demarcation of settlements, mines and facilities responsible for it.

The operations center itself was unsurprisingly simple in its construction, but behind Gallad rectangular windows cut out of the concrete wall lined the rear. He could see most of the city on this side now, covered as it was in the thin layer of air-muck, and the wall that enclosed it. Beyond that, the horizon revealed the natural environment of the planet: scattered clumps of waist high ferns, dusty rolling fields as far as the eyes could see, with seldom more than a few tree-like shrubs and stalk plants scattered throughout.

Gallad gestured for Kalren to come around to his side of the projector table, “We were discussing the placement of garrisons now. Follow along, here is the Sody-Eegen,” he said, motioning circles around the deep trench with his finger. The lay of the land was five hundred kilometers lateral and longitudinal. Kalren could see Asvad Huf on the near side of the trench. “Here has been described as the center of our problem areas. Do you care to paint your lord’s son a picture as to why?”

Bree understood that the question was directed towards him. “Most work sites on Cheseita are fairly remote and self-contained, Master. Communications are restricted to two-way connection points, often between settlement, work sites and then the local administrative hubs,” he answered, beginning to explain the process of how these issues emerged at all.

“Is it easier for people to talk here?” Kalren asked, though mostly to put his thoughts in the open.

“Yes, that’s exactly right,” he said. “The richness of the surface deposits and the ease of starting sub-surface mines means that the concentration of settlements is far higher here than anywhere else. Workers are constantly moving from site to site where labor is most needed, and settlements intermingle with one another.”

Kalren looked at the table, eyeing over the density of white-dotted settlements all along the edges of the ridge. “Did the Castellan make any effort to prevent this?” he asked, “like a system of… passports or identification badges?”

“Castellan Bramas considered this as a possible action early on, but he reached the conclusion that it wasn’t efficacious.” Bree paused for a time, the plump functionary looking down at the map. “The system at play near the Sody-Eegen settlements has always been fairly hands-off,” he spoke now looking at Kalren, “people; workers, both move around all the time from station to station wherever they’re needed, and the local settlements aren’t arranged in any particular way. There’s never been any oversight in the allocation of resources, so… people travel between settlements to get what they need. It’s the way of life out there.”

Gallad rapped his knuckles against the table surface. “This lax means of control is why we’re having these problems now,” he said in a sour tone, “go and get the reports I’ve asked, Bree Dah.” The Chesian functionary bowed and withdrew from the room, and Gallad listened to his footsteps disappear down the hallway. “He makes only excuses, it’s tiring to listen to.”

“Have you checked for listeners?” Luke asked.

“We have,” Gallad answered, gesturing behind him to where two soldiers of his personal retinue were standing. Kalren had scarcely paid them any attention until now. “Nothing yet. So far we don’t have any reason to suspect that the castellany was involved in this insurrection.”

“So incompetence then,” Luke muttered.

Kalren studied the map before asking, “What exactly is the scale of this mutiny? So far all I’ve heard is vague terms: refusal to work, shipments being delayed and violence at the settlements.”

Gallad looked at him with an inquisitive glare, rubbing his gloved hand through his jet black hair. “A-h-h, he’s learning well,” he remarked, then turning at the map table tapped on the surface and brought up some limited information. “Ahitham here has reported thirty-two cases of violence against security personnel. Here, this is Jahried: it had a reported strike of over five hundred participating workers. When our dear Castellan tried to enforce the law, the settlement went into full rebellion. That’s potentially… forty thousand insurrectionists now. Here, and here,” he said pointing at two pairs of maglev lines feeding out of the far-side of the trench, “have been cut. They stole explosives from one of the mines.”

Kalren folded his arms close to his chest and looked over at the information Gallad had presented, thinking: This truly was festering out of control. The Castellan had no hope of keeping things in order. If they had explosives, they were dangerous—the settlements where they forced his security back… they would’ve needed weapons for that. How did they become armed? If they broke into the armories, that would explain some of it… or there were sympathetic traitors in the ranks that enabled them.

“Tomorrow I will ride out with the forward forces,” Gallad said.

“Can I come?” Kalren asked.

“No, it’s too dangerous and we don’t have an idea of what the situation looks like at the ground level. Your father would have my head if I got his son lynched by an angry mob,” he finished with a toothy half-grin, a rare moment of playfulness. He tapped the table to turn the projection off, resting his arm on the edge. “You’ll stay here with Ostiary Wehto and the rest of the legion that’s not being deployed yet. Bree Dah is expected to provide me with a list of security and estate staff here at Gedar, I want you to help in going through it. Maybe we can find a traitorous point of contact here, that might explain things.”

“If there’s a traitor in the estate, then the rebels will be expecting you,” Kalren surmised.

“Possible… it’s possible,” he said, “but these people would be fools to confront us openly. I anticipate they’ll go to ground, which means we will need to flush them out.”

Kalren nodded, reaching a hand up to the armored fatigues he wore and ineffectually tugged on the collar. These things are too warm and tight, he thought. How does Luke wear one all day? He stood back and listened as Gallad went over a few final details regarding their deployments. All of this information he would need to reiterate again to the legion commanders, Kalren knew. It was all for his benefit.

He studied the trusted man of his father’s features in detail as he spoke, thinking: he’s nervous. He puts on a front of confidence and barks orders to the Chesians, but he’s worried. He wants to prove himself to my father, but the confusion of what’s going on here leaves too many angles for him.

Finally they finished going over the briefing, and Gallad requested that he and Luke take a tour of the estate to better understand the layout of where they would be staying for some time. Dinner was planned to be served later and Bree Dah would surely be there, which intrigued Kalren since he had not formed an opinion of the man yet. He had some sympathy towards the strikers, he thought, but how far does that go; does it chafe against his loyalty he owes to my father? He was eager to see, and for the first time since stepping foot off of the troop-shuttle Kalren felt normal again.

Dead Air, Dead Land

SECTOR: SOKARIAN RESERVE
PLANET: SOKARIA
EXTRACTION REGION: DESAR
MAJORITY STAKEHOLDER: HOUSE EPHERON
6780

The jungle wasn’t supposed to be quiet. It was a living, breathing thing and even the horrors of the Thaullen invasion hadn’t been able to kill it. The nightmare creatures of the jungle learned to adapt to the chemical agents the Ithaxians dropped and grew all the more terrible for it. But as the Ithaxian troop carriers rolled to a halt before the outer gates of the labor camp, the jungle was silent, not so much as one insect rising to drink the blood of the swearing Ithaxian soldiers as they hastily dismounted. The gate itself was deactivated and the fence wasn’t ablaze with the reassuring hum of electrostatic energy. A dead fence, an open gate and a quiet jungle.

Sergeant Vozan ignored the uneasy feeling settling in his gut as he motioned his company of house Epheron conscripts to dismount and form up behind him. Once they had he raised up his rifle and motioned them forward. He kept his finger on the trigger and scanned the camp's gate for even the suggestion of movement, but there was nothing. Unceremoniously he led his men past the gate and into the camp proper, with the men from the other transports following close behind. He kept his hands from twitching as he ordered his men to form a perimeter, but failed to keep from grinding his teeth behind his respirator. The mission was supposed to be easy, but not this easy.

This camp had been missing its quota of raw ore to Deshar for months now, and had gone dark a week ago. The last shipment of food and fresh prisoners sent out to the camp had never returned, and that had finally convinced someone high up that it was time to send a proper group of soldiers to actually find out what happened here. Vozan had made up his mind as soon as he saw the open gate and dead fence; the power grid had failed and everyone in the camp had been killed when the jungle moved back in. It happened often enough, and the absence of any prisoners or guards seemed to support his theory, but there were too many oddities present that kept Vozan from believing himself. The nearest buildings were a few dozen yards ahead of them and seemed to be in decent condition, none of the outward signs of damage that he had come to expect when dealing with overrun camps could be seen. There weren’t any bodies strewn about either, or pools of blood that had been so common in other places. Equipment was strewn about and abandoned, but that was the only sign that pointed to any kind of recent habitation. It was as if the entirety of the camp had just up and vanished into thin air.

He shook himself out of his musing as he signaled his men to keep moving forward. Through the caustic haze in the air Vozan could tell that from the gatehouse there was thirty yards of clear cut field before the camp itself began. The interior camp was surrounded by its own fence, and it too was dead with its gate wide open. Immediately past the gate was a massive warehouse that should have been the camp's motor pool. Vozan ordered his men to form up in breaching positions, but he still kept one eye on the jungle.

The breach was thankfully clean, but unnecessary. The main floor of the garage was empty of life but held some of the missing trucks. They were all in various states of disrepair and disassembly, all of them useless in their current state. The only other notable thing was that they had their standard camo paint stripped and a new, shoddily applied jungle pattern had been applied, with a green triangle taking center prominence on the hood and doors of the truck.

As they continued the search they found more signs of recent habitation, various tools were scattered around the garage haphazardly and half eaten meals lingered beside still burning cigarettes. The prisoners had left in a hurry, but they hadn’t been driven out by jungle predators. The trucks being vandalized was odd, either a pirate gang had moved in and forced the prisoners to mine for them or the prisoners rose up and were trying to start their own insurgency. Either way they must’ve fled into the jungle when they saw Vozan’s convoy approaching. The sergeant took a long look at the distant treeline then muttered;

“Poor bastards.” If they had fled into the jungle, they’d be wishing they had stayed put and waited for the enforcers to come and put a bullet between their eyes. At last that was quick and painless; being torn apart by a Sokarian Har’il or skinned by a Deshari panther were far slower, far crueler ways to die. The jungle beasts liked to play with their food, they tortured their victims and waited for them to bleed out in agony before finally eating them.

Vozan tried to suppress a shudder as he recalled the cruelties of the jungle; He had seen a Har’il cut a man’s leg muscles instead of breaking his neck, and he was powerless to do anything but watch as the beast slowly stalked its prey, cutting him half a hundred times and savoring his screams. He had hidden beneath the body of a Tendrakkian rebel while an eight legged Isir’il stalked and butchered his scout platoon. No one knew what made the predators of Sokaria so cruel, though there were plenty of theories. Maybe the animals liked the way their prey tasted when it was afraid and took great pains to season their meals before eating.

His men continued their search of the camp, and just as before the mess hall, the prisoner barracks and the guards station were abandoned. He had expected as much, but what was disconcerting was the lack of any signs of struggle, not a single bullet hole, spent casing or dried blood splatter as far as any of them could see. Even if the prisoners had risen up, or a pirate gang had raided this place quickly and cleanly, there should have been some evidence of struggle. But all he and his men found was more and more evidence of a hasty but peaceful withdrawal.

The hairs on the back of his neck stood up as he scanned the treeline with increasing unease. The jungle was still quiet, but now there was a tension in the air as every breeze and falling leaf became an omen of dread. Where once he had seen trees and bush, Vozan saw a hundred shifting eyes staring back at him, waiting for him to break before they pounced. He knew from experience that while it was damn hard to pull off, a large unit of soldiers could set themselves up in the jungle without alerting everything that wanted them dead. He had personally been a part of several such ambushes against the Thaullens, and he was noticing all the same signs; the dead camp, the lack of wildlife and the unnatural silence of the jungle. The jungle was still breathing, it was just holding its breath. He couldn’t know for certain, but his gut told him they had walked into an ambush. Man or beast, it didn’t matter, one wrong move and he and his men would be caught out in the open and slaughtered.

Not for the first time did he wish he was still serving with his old wartime unit, the Drakaina rangers. They were composed of the toughest bastards Sokaria had to offer, then the toughest of those bastards who had managed to survive the Thaullen invasion and subsequent occupation. Man or woman, human or Tendrakkian, if you could hike a hundred miles through the jungle without making a sound or break the neck of a mother Har’il with your bare hands, the rangers would welcome you with open arms. They had formed after the collapse of Ithaxian organized resistance on Sokaria and continued to wage a guerilla war against the Thaullens for almost four years, alongside other resistance units.

But when the war ended, so did the rangers. They had nominally been a part of Sokaria’s previous owners military forces, the Charter house Nyrian, but the occupation of Sokaria and the looting of their assets saw that once proud house reduced to extinction. In the following months, other houses eagerly bought whatever was left of Nyrian’s assets for fractions of their true value, even if all they were buying were the deeds to burned out buildings and smoldering craters. A small Mainward house, House Epheron, who had barely enough capital to qualify as a merchant house, had ended up with a controlling interest of Sokaria and had not seen fit to renew the rangers as a unit or integrate them into their own house's special forces. The rangers were given a choice of enlisting as regular house soldiers or a severance package that barely covered a ticket offworld.

Most of his comrades had kept their dignity and left Sokaria, but Vozan was either too stubborn or too stupid to give up on Sokaria after years of fighting for her. He and a few other veterans had accepted the offered roles of noncoms in Epheron’s army, and did what they could to make an effective fighting force out of their inexperienced conscripts and incompetent officers.

Vozan kept his nerve and rallied his men, giving no outward indication that he had spotted the ambush until he had them all gathered in the center of the camp, where the main administrative hub was placed. From the outside it looked like a squat, one story concrete bunker, but the main part of the building would be an underground complex that housed the camp's main guard barracks and the reactor itself. It was the only place in the camp, aside from the mines, that had only one entrance and could be completely sealed from the outside environment, which was what Vozan was counting on. He keyed a signal to be an alert through his helmet to the few veterans of his company, who served as squad leads.

Suddenly the jungle came alive, gunfire and mortars mixing with the roars of predators as bullets kicked up dust around Vozan and his soldiers. Heavy explosion after explosion shook the ground as each of their six transports were blown up one by one from unseen insurgents. From the jungle hundreds of alien and human prisoners, all of them armed with Ithaxian weapons, charged out of the treeline and towards the bunker. They were following half a dozen massive tamed Har’ils while improvised mortar shells burst ahead of them and closed in on Vozan’s position.

“The bunker, get into the damn bunker!” The sergeant roared, pulling his men out of their stupor and getting them to return fire. They tried to set up a perimeter to apply suppressive fire while they filed into the bunker, shooting wildly at the rapidly approaching Har’ils and rebels. The conscripts, while panicked, were able to make an orderly enough retreat into the bunker while the veterans and more competent soldiers kept up the barrage. A few men faltered when the mortar shells started falling, but they were quickly thrown into the bunker to face disciplinary action for negligence, once they had escaped the ambush.

Vozan was in the doorway, ushering the last of his wounded men inside when the first Har’il pounced onto him. Vozan swung around at the last moment and jerked back, narrowly avoiding being gutted by the Har’ils bladed tail, instead suffering a long and narrow gash across his midsection. He swung his rifle around, switched it to fully automatic and unloaded the weapon into the beast's lunging face. A hail of 10 mm incendiary bullets sawed the Har’ils face in half as Vozan stepped back and swung closed the heavy bunker door. The still lunging animal struck the door with a heavy thud, then let out a shrill moan as it writhed in agony.

Vozan breathed heavily and waited for the adrenaline to roll back before popping out his spent magazine and loading a fresh one. He then ordered,

“Get a barricade set up, I want the door reinforced and constant fire out the windows! Take the wounded down a level and set up an aid station! Corporal Zarian, take your squad and sweep the lower levels, I don’t want to risk rebel holdouts hitting us in the rear. Specialist Cyrise, get our comms back up and artillery control on the line!” Vozan barked his orders and took command of the front barricade once they were all issued. The rebels made a few half-hearted attempts to breach the door, but stopped after it became clear they couldn’t easily breach the door.

The sergeant tore off his respirator once the gunfire died down and breathed the stale recycled air, trying to get his thoughts straight. He lifted up the protective goggles from his eyes and rubbed them in irritation despite the lingering pollutants that stung his eyes.

“Boss, we got a problem. Need you down on level three.” The static filled voice of specialist Cyrise blared through his helmet, and he was halfway down the hall to her position before he radioed back his confirmation. The specialist was holed up in one of the guards barracks, her comms equipment scattered across two bunks as she attempted to get any sort of clear signal, but no matter what all she got was angry static. She threw her headset down in disgust as Vozan entered and loudly complained,

“There’s too much interference in atmo screwing everything up boss, I can barely keep our inter company comms up, forget about anything in Deshar.” Vozan swore at the specialists' report. Without artillery they’d be Inkrenians in a barrel, waiting for the rebels to either force open the door or wait for them to starve. He rubbed his face in exhaustion as he said,

“What about the base comms? That should have enough power to clear the interference, right?”

“Yeah but the main comm controls are on the same level as the reactor, so until Zarian gives the all clear, I can’t…”

Static blared in both their ears before a desperate transmission came through in bits and pieces,

“…bel for…ing in the…are surround…getting screw…need reinforc…” the transmission died with a sharp crack, but Vozan and Cyrise were already running to the lower levels.

’Rebels in the jungle, rebels in the bunker…’, Vozan mused bitterly, ’this is a real mess you’ve walked them into, old man…’. Suddenly the lights of the bunkers flickered and died, and after a moment in pitch black the hallways were illuminated by the ominous glare of emergency lights. At the same time the constant hum of the air filtration system slowed and eventually died, leaving them standing in an unnatural silence.

“…of course the power dies, why wouldn’t it…” Vozan hissed under his breath before continuing to sprint, Cyrise on his heels. Both of them knew that without power the bunker's air filters wouldn’t be able to properly scrub the air of the toxic agents that were omnipresent in the Sokarian atmosphere. The rebels wouldn’t even have to wait for the soldiers to starve to death, they’d die from poisoning in just a few hours if they couldn’t fix the filters.

The lower levels of the bunker were in chaos as Zarians surviving soldiers battled the rebels in brutal close quarters fighting. Vozan arrived and was immediately thrown off his feet by a charging Staldrien armed with an oversized mining pick, just barely managing to avoid getting his skull shattered by the alien. He turned his desperate dodge into a dive and fired a controlled burst into the rebels chest, the big alien making one last surprised gasp before it slumped over dead.

Vozan jumped back to his feet and took control of the situation. The overzealous Staldrien had thrown the human line into chaos, but after being gunned down the line reformed and the remaining rebels took their chance to fall back into the back rooms and dig in. Corporal Zarian had survived along with four of his men who were still combat capable, and with them and Cyrise the sergeant formed a makeshift breaching team to hunt down the surviving rebels.

It was a commonly accepted idiom among the Ithaxian military that the best way to clear a bunker of hostile combatants was to spike the filtration units with enough poison to kill half a city, but failing that a healthy mix of explosives and incendiaries wouldn’t hurt. Vozan and his team followed this doctrine for the first few floors, throwing grenades and satchel explosives into rooms and quickly gunning down whoever was left, but as they got closer to the reactor they were forced to let up on the explosives for fear of damaging the machinery.

The last few halls and utility rooms were death traps. Two men were shredded when a Tendrakkian wielding four submachine guns in each of his hands turned a corner and opened fire before being killed. Another man died when an Inkrenian skol broke his leg with psionics then crushed his skull with a falling crate. Vozan had shot a hole through the skol’s cranium and stuffed a grenade into the leak, killing it. Corporal Zarian died when he got the jump on two human rebels. He shot both, turned around after they fell to make sure his comrades were still behind him and died when the second rebel, who had only been grazed, pulled a grenade and turned all three of them into gore and viscera.

But after all that, the survivors had managed to reach the reactor control room. Expecting the last of the rebels to have fortified the room, the three of them had formed up in a breaching position and threw phosphorus grenades through the door. Once the smoke cleared they were surprised to see that the room was almost abandoned, save for a lone figure at the far end of the room by the reactor. Slowly the trio approached, keeping their rifles raised.

What they saw made them realize they needn’t have bothered. The figure was reclined on a medical bed beside the reactor controls, a complex tangle of wires ran interconnected through its body and into both a menagerie of beeping medical equipment and the reactor controls themself. The figure was a Tendrakkian male, aged and terminally ill, his once green scales now deathly white and he had a terrible cough that saw him heave up globs of blue blood. A book, with the same green triangle on it that they had seen before, rested closed on the aliens chest. Vozan grimaced as he got a better look at the dying alien. He knew what it looked like for a man to die of rust lung, it was a common ailment amongst the prisoners, but he was surprised to see how long the man had fought for. The tendrakkians he saw die had all gone before their scales had started bleaching; someone had gone through hell to give this one as much time as he could.

With the last surviving soldier standing watch Vozan and Cyrise slowly approached the dying alien, lowering their weapons as they stared on in horror. Cyrise approached the reactor controls and began to work the machinery, coaxing the reactor back to life. After a moment she leaned back and said,

“I don’t know what the hell the rebels were thinking, but the crazy bastards tied up a bunch of the reactor systems to that guy's heart rate.” She nodded towards the Tendrakkian, “When it stops it’ll fry the core and leave us dead in the water.” Vozan sighed as he rubbed his tired eyes and asked in a weary tone,

“Anything you can do? Can you disconnect him before he gets us killed?” Cyrise shrugged and replied,

“Maybe, but it’ll be like I’m defusing a bomb. One wrong move and…” Cyrise trails off, making a fist and miming an explosion. Vozan grimaced,

“So that’s it? Either we wait for this lizard to die and the poison to kill us, or you play bomb squad and try not to blow us all to hell?” Cyrise laughed bitterly and said,

“Pretty much. I can maybe trip a hard reset now and force the whole system to reboot, but that runs the risk of wiping the system's memory and resetting its IFF to neutral. We’d have to deal with the security system coming back online and not recognizing us as friendlies. Your call.”

Vozan weighed his options, took a moment to curse whatever higher power there was for forcing him into such a raw deal, then ordered,

“Cut the lizard off before he dies.” Cyrise nodded and produced a pair of wire cutters from her tool belt, saying, “Give me a hand then and watch his vitals.”

Vozan placed his rifle down and assisted Cyrise as best he could, reading out various numbers from the medical machines and helping her to identify and cut certain wires. It was slow, tense work, and both of them were cracking under the pressure when the Tendrakkian suddenly awoke, his eyelids flicking open to reveal two pairs of blinded eyes. He whispered something that neither of the humans heard at first, but after they recovered themselves Vozan leaned in to hear the old man as he whispered,

“… take this seed and keep it on you, so that when you’re killed and your corpse is left to rot on my world, your blood will water it and something good will come from you…” Vozan didn’t notice the tendrakkkian push the seed into his hand until it was there, just as he didn’t notice the dying man pull one of the bigger wires keeping him alive out of his body.

The tendrakkians death didn’t trigger a meltdown or leave the reactor fried and useless, but it did manage to force the system reset that Cyrise had warned about. When the main lights flashed back on they were followed immediately by alarms and the hiss of opening gas valves as the bunkers automated security system woke up and identified every living thing inside it as hostile.

The last thing Vozan remembered was staring in shock at Cyrise before the both of them collapsed from the gas, burning lungs and eyes their last feeling before they had the life choked out of them.

People Forget
Co-written with The United Roman Reich
Star System SL-81487 of URR space

The station of Tawast-Mah hangs above the pale turquoise gas giant named Kwarent, its color marking out the station above it. The system was itself unremarkable, with no habitable planets yet three resource rich gas giants that may be exploited. A single orange dwarf star dominated the sparse system. For centuries, Tawast-Mah sat as an important station along the Berekh-Jouissar trade route, deep within the Morian Traverse. It allowed refueling from any traders who came in, and since it lacked the commodity of artificial gravity on station, people came and went rather quickly. Pirate groups typically allowed stations like Tawast-Mah to stay active as they attracted vital merchants which they could exploit, though some of the larger pirate groups did demand tithes from the station from time to time. These arrangements lived and died with the pirate groups, however, and was a standard operating of business within the traverse.

The weapon systems which discouraged smaller pirate groups from even attempting to raid the station however, were smouldering wrecks, destroyed by Clanner ships in system. The station was wide, but didn’t have the weapons to threaten true raider fleets like the Clanners. Two hundred Clanner vessels were in-system, operating at the behest of the United Roman Reich, the annexers of Tawast-Mah. Originally, Tawast-Mah had hoped for a favorable deal with the Romans, to maintain relations and keep their station a live. Dealings broke down however, as the Romans realized just how exploitable SL-81487 was. Negotiations quickly turned from diplomatic talks to coercion on the Roman side. It almost seemed like tensions were going to flare up, but the Roman negotiators relented. They said they would return to negotiations soon, and parked a small fleet in-system.

That’s when Clan Scarlet Wolf was called in. Scarlet Wolf, one of the mad dogs of the Clans, had been active in the Morian Traverse since the Aruthians tried to annex the whole thing in one fell swoop. Independent actions by them eventually became sponsored by the Romans, and now, they were the cleanup crews of the URR, clearing out the trash of these systems for what they considered to be a premium. Importantly, the Romans could clean their hands of whatever crimes the Clan committed as ‘simple business’. The Clanner task force deployed to Tawast-Mah as negotiations broke down, and quickly leveled the weapons that the station had on hand. The Drifters continued hails to the admiral of the task force were ignored, and immediately, the Drifters knew that the Clanners were not here for the simple surrender of Tawast-Mah, as Clanner Frigates began maneuvering to the edges of Tawast-Mah.

==========

SW-IC-W123558, callsign ‘Riddle’, approached the airlock with his squad close behind him. He was the Sergeant, tasked with first confirmation that none of the Drifters were attempting exfiltration from the airlock. While the poor bastards had nowhere to go, they could attempt to hug the hull of one of their ships and lead to scorching the paintjob, or worse, when they had to take them out. Riddle had been loosely informed by his Lieutenant ‘Dash’ that they were to secure Tawast-Mah, a station above that turquoise giant. Loosely informed, because Dash did not inform Riddle or the rest of the platoon if they were taking any prisoners. When not informed, and given the task of securing a location, it was an unwritten rule that command couldn’t give a damn what they did, so long as all hostiles were dealt with.

Riddle double checked the safety was off on his plasma rifle. These weapons were a rarity for the Clanners; they typically only used plasma machine guns, and were given to support elements in the squad. But these rifles were a necessity in space, especially when wanting to cause minimum damage to the hull of a station or ship. Typically, they’d scorch the inner wall and leave it slagged, but not completely rip holes through the station. One thing Riddle (and, he imagined his comrades too) could never get used to was these damn thruster systems on their suits. Fighting in zero-g felt sickening, with no true way of being what was considered up. It meant enemies could hide in any corner.

Riddle’s helmet sparked to life as his CO Dash came on the line. “Riddle, you in position?”

“Affirmative, sir. No signs of airlock being used. Damn Stretchers would rather die in their hole than face us in the open.”

“Lighting conditions are presumed to be minimized to allow the Drifters to get a drop on you. Activate Friend-Foe sensors ASAP.”

“Affirmative.” Riddle didn’t like F-F either. Messed with the senses. But it’d be stupid going in without it. As the rest of his squad reached the door, Riddle called out one as Face, telling him to begin opening the door while everyone swapped to F-F. Clanner sensors in the helmet allowed them to match friend from foe, hence the name. Clanners glowed a faint blue, while anything with a heat signature and broadly shaped was red. It was a system originally developed for these less-than-viable lighting conditions, but is also believed to help in counter-psionic operations, where psions may try to trick the senses of the Clanners; if they saw what was believed to be the enemy glowing blue, they could assume it to be a trick by a psion. That was the hope, anyway.

As the first door to the airlock opened, Riddle quickly looked in before putting a hand on another one of his men’s shoulder, Clover, pushing him into the airlock shortly behind. Clover was considered an unlucky bastard in the squad, having seemingly faced every single malfunction with his equipment on the field and training envos. But this was the real thing, and Riddle didn’t believe in superstition. As Face opened the second door to the airlock, Riddle and Clover quickly cleared the room. It was full of racks meant to house suits for the space outside the station: all of them were empty. It was clear that the Drifters were ready for all functions to be cut off.

“Damn Thin Men got guts, I'll give them that.” Face said with a corny chuckle. “What next Riddle?”

Riddle pointed to one of his men in the back. “Atom, get that damn door open. We’ll be breaching soon. Clover, ready a plasma grenade. Everyone else, ready for entry. These hallways are f!@#ing death traps. You go in quick, shoot anything looking red or thin, and find cover. Understood?”

The rest of his troop gave a quick nod. Atom quickly pushed up in front of Face, placing a charge on the door that’d explode it inward. In the meantime, Face resealed the door behind them to stop a venting situation from occurring. Riddle then positioned himself behind Clover, who readied a plasma grenade. It was not like most chemically activated grenades the Clanners used, instead being a press-and-hold electronically activated grenade.

Technically, these grenades can be simply deactivated with a simple and quick press-in, yet were unable to be used again after deactivation without a complete lookover. They were able to be activated out of atmo, which is why the Clanners even bothered to make them. Elsewise, they were dangerous, and had a tendency to fry those who activated them by accident and weren’t able to scoop them back up. And in the tight space all ten of his men were in, Riddle looked at Clover like a hawk as he took the grenade out, and placed it in both of his hands. The thing was round and ridged, shaped more like a blocky, fragmented baseball than a standard grenade.

Riddle looked at Atom, looking for confirmation the charge was set. Suddenly, the station shook multiple times. Clanners were breaching throughout Tawast-Mah. The battle had begun in earnest. Atom gave a nod that the charge was set, and Riddle gave the signal. The door blew clear inward, sending the thing speeding down the hallway, as Clover pressed in the button and threw in the grenade. It screeched like a hawk as it activated, alerting everyone to its presence but unable to stop it as it drifted in. A bright blue light flashed as it activated, and Riddle caught a glimpse of Drifters melting as the plasma stuck to them and their suits. With that, Riddle shouted. “Go, go, go!” as he, Clover, and Face rushed in.

Streams of plasma by the Clanners were returned with the Drifters' own, dancing back and forth between the long hallways of the Station. Face was the first to go down, as a plasma shot landed into his neck and set him drifting forward, carried by momentum. Atom was the next to go, as a barrage of plasma ripped through his blue-grey armor and tore his chest apart. But the Drifters were being depleted rapidly, having neither the skill nor armor of the Clanners before them. Riddle approached a doorway, and when a drifter went out from it, he was able to grab its hand holding a pistol and break it, its weakened skeletal structure not helping against the full strength of a Neanderthal. From there, Riddle plugged the drifter with a dozen shots of plasma to the chest, lighting himself up in the darkness as it then softly drifted in the zero-g, its chest quickly melting to the core.

By then, the hallways darkened. All drifters in the section were eliminated or incapacitated. Riddle looked over his dead squad, and counted four dead. Clover, the typically unlucky bastard, had made it through the firefight. The dead drifters settled into the various corners of the hallway, fried by the plasma shots. Many of their long limbs were burned away from the plasma, others having had their entire torsos melted away by the Plasma.

As Riddle was about to signal to Dash their success, he saw a Drifter float into one of the rooms. Following behind him with Clover in toe, he saw the thing crawl around the corner, where it settled in front of two other Drifters: more in size to that of a human, though lanky all the same. They had settled in what appeared to be a separate living quarters, meant for a family. The crawling drifter had one of her hands shot off, and cradled the two, a mother to her children.

“Please…” the thing muttered, barely audible to Riddle as he looked the three over.

With a single look to Clover, Riddle communicated to Dash. “Sir, our section is green. I repeat, section green. We’ve secured our side of Tawast-Mah. Minimal casualties sustained. Fighting order is maintained.”

“Understood Riddle. Link up with the rest of the Platoon and clear the way.”

Riddle took those words to heart. “Affirmative, sir.” ending communication with Dash, he also turned off his in-helmet translation controls. Looking to the drifters before him, he leveled his plasma rifle to them. “I’m sorry, Stretchers. But this station is no longer yours.”

Even with translations turned off, it’s impossible to hide the cry of “no!” as the plasma rifle opened fire. As the three screamed out, Riddle’s body was lit up by the plasma, a toothy grin on his face as the plasma fried them. Finally, Riddle let go of the trigger. The only thing left of the three drifters was a heaping pile of ash, charred bones, and remnants of flesh.

Suddenly, Riddle dropped his grin, turning to Clover, who seemed unbothered. “Get the rest of the squad organized. We’re linking up with the rest of the platoon.”

“Understood Riddle.”

With that, the two reentered the hallway. They paid no mind to what they had just done. Any incapacitated Drifters that were found in the hallway were quickly dispatched. They weren’t there to take prisoners or feel sympathy for those who had long outlived their usefulness. The Drifters were a dying breed, and the Clanners didn’t mind helping speed up the process.

After all, it was just business.

==========

The Roman cruiser RRS Hanami had served throughout the Morian Crisis, with two confirmed ship kills to its name, until its main starboard capacitor bank had blown out during one of the last skirmishes with Aruthia back in early 6779. The resulting fire had taken badly to some of the wiring which had prolonged an otherwise routine capacitor switch out and she hadn’t been put back into service until after the peace treaty was signed. Now her pale gray hull sat with idle engines about 40 light seconds out from Tawast-Mah as a shuttle was completing its docking procedure.

Aaron Shore was a tall man from the Materiel Administration under the Ministry of Defence. While slim he filled out his grey uniform nicely, the insignia on his shoulders indicating the rank of a colonel, or an Oberst as the Romans called it. The orange thread used to depict the insignias indicated however that Aaron wasn’t an Oberst at all but simply a civilian official within the Roman military that was receiving payment corresponding to that of an Oberst. His actual military rank was no more than the enlisted rank of Corporal. His status as an “orange Oberst" would however ensure that he never had to lead enlisted soldiers in the field since his war time duties were already settled.

Aaron’s hazel eyes reflected stars as he looked up at the curved ceiling of the room he was standing in. The Operations Plot wasn’t a room that was technically necessary on a cruiser like the Hanami but her class still maintained one as a standard feature. The Operations Plot was close to the bridge and the CIC and on bigger ships it served as a private planning room for flag officers or operations planning. Such things were rarely needed on a cruiser but the features were there even if the room acted more like a glorified meeting room. The lower two thirds of the walls were covered in consoles and painted in the typical off-white cream color of Roman ship interiors. The upper third of the walls merged with the curved ceiling and acted as one uninterrupted panorama window. A display with a dedicated VI that merged data, sensor information and visual feedback from hull mounted cameras to depict a curated view of space outside of the ship.

The focus was on the spindly hulking shape of Tawast-Mah and the Clanner ships circling it. Aaron had watched it for a long while. The image was neither true to reality nor real time. It was simply a type of representation of the things going on as far as multiple sensors could figure it out. Yet it was a captivating sight. The aged space station above a turquoise gas giant surrounded by a pack of wolves. Aaron thought that if what surely was happening inside the station at the moment were to be depicted in film then the sound effect of snarling wolves would fit right in. Howls and snarls and the ripping of flesh by long pale teeth. It was a beastly image, then again, the Morian Traverse was a place of beasts. It had always been and would most assuredly continue to be for decades to come.

The Morian Traverse had been conquered but it remained to be tamed. An expensive endeavor that the Roman state could hardly afford at this moment. Not with all the bells and whistles at least. The navy was in tatters with its lowest roster of active ships in probably forty years. Those numbers would be replaced, and losses had been continuously replaced throughout the war, but there would be years before crew numbers were back up and to the same proficiency level as before the war. A Navy was more than its tonnage and number of ships after all.

Aaron, like most of his equals high up in the Roman military administration, had always thought of the Morian Traverse as the perpetual opportunity. Almost 5000 lightyears across by the old borders the traverse represented a massive area of space between Aruthia and the URR. The Roman state had, through the peace deal, gained half of that as strategic depth. Depth that was worth quite a lot, all things considered. But Aruthia had gained just as much and eight inhabitable systems compared to the Roman’s five. Luckily the Clanners had made sure to even the playingfield. The inhabited systems of the traverse lay in ruins and the Aruthians would have to spend untold man hours and resources on stabilizing their area of the traverse long before they could even begin to establish any offensive infrastructure. The Mazekyan annexation of space near Ahbruq and Dhibaeh had also probably shrunken the width of a possible front with a noticeable margin. It was sad, Aaron conceded, that the whole affair meant that millions if not billions of people inside the traverse would now suffer from famine, starvation and resource scarcity for the foreseeable future. Not that such conditions were rare in the galaxy. The last century had practically been a greatest hits of all horrors imaginable as the flailing carcass of the Commonwealth breathed its last.

Aaron’s eyes lingered on the ships of Clan Scarlet Wolf as a notification through his implant informed him that the KTMC representative was on their way.

==========

Dolev Meishar was the representative for the Kanaan Mech and Tech Company. He was a hefty and bulbous man with a slightly receding hairline, scraggly hair that fluttered out in all directions and long and thick sideburns which ended only at just the jaw. His hair was peppered black and white, his sideburns a deep black. The suit he wore was ill-fitting, and he had the appearance of having just recently shaved. His skin was smooth and rosy, especially in his face. His voice had a slight slur like that of a drunkard, but was surprisingly deep and eloquent. Dolev knew how to persuade anyone. But, as characteristic of most Neanderthals, he had a grumpy streak. In Dolev’s case, it was mostly the lack of conversation that got him going, especially from the Roman clone which had been guiding him to the room.

Dolev entered the room and immediately let out a shout which filled the empty air. “Mister Shore, is it? Thank the Monad I finally found someone with a will to actually converse! This clone of yours is nothing but ‘no sir, yes sir.’ It is aggravating! You should talk to a Clanner, nothing but conversation!”

Dolev set his suitcase down on the table, pulling out a datapad from within. “Now then, we were to discuss how KTMC may benefit the United Roman Reich, yes?” Dolev said the nation’s name in a slow and deliberate way, as if Dolev may’ve got his dates wrong.

Aaron had turned to face Dolev as the man entered the room and he offered a thin lopsided smile as the Neanderthal spoke. Thin crow’s feet appeared at the edges of his eyes and he noted the Kùzhì corporal that had escorted Dolev just as the automatic door slid close. “I’m sorry to hear that the Navy’s hospitality isn’t to your liking, Mr Meishar. They are just trying to act professional, I’m sure.” Aaron said with a soft and friendly tone that brushed the comment aside. He didn’t bother to comment on the ‘your clone’ thing. He was well aware that Clanners seemed to take some type of issue with the Kùzhì and this only seemed to extend to the Neanderthals at large.

“There were some questions regarding some of your product lines, yes.” Aaron went on and gave a nod. “As per our previous communiqué my administration is largely positive but still split on the size and scope of what KTMC is offering.”

Aaron stepped closer to the table and motioned towards a stainless tray stacked with consumables. Bowls of rice cakes and chilled grapes. A pitcher with ice water, small serving size bottles of sparkling water as well as a heavy ceramic tea pot and a glass bottle of some aged Mazekyan brandy with its seal unbroken. “Refreshments?”

“Certainly.” Dolev took a look at the Mazekyan brandy with his grey-blue eyes. “From Sechet, heh? A taste from home.”

Dolev took the brandy and poured himself a glass. His hands were big by human standards, and the bottle nicely fit in his palm. “Frankly I’m surprised you even bothered to find this stuff. Imports from Mazekya itself are rare, especially commodities like this. It’s more commercial and industrial acquisitions that come by.”

Dolev took his glass of brandy, a thing of grapes, and water over to the table, eating the grapes quite handily. “Come Aaron, have some! The brandy may excite your senses.”

Aaron smiled, still lopsided but showing teeth this time as he shook his head. “I’m just trying to be a gracious host.” He reached for the tea pot and poured himself a cup as a slight floral scent rose from the agitated liquid. “Alcohol remains strictly illegal to us.” Aaron noted and gave a playful nod towards the bottle. “I don’t want to say what we’ll have to do to it if you don’t leave with it later. It’s all yours.”

“Il-lee-gahl?” Dolev said in a mocking tone of the word. “Bah, that’s true. You are representing the military. Can’t have a bit of fun! Stick to the rice cakes and sparkling water then. Luckily for me, KTMC is a civilian company. Well, civilian in the sense it’s suits and run-of-the-mills who just so happen to be arming the largest military contingent in Mazekyan space, whatever the Karatur say in that regard.”

Dolev took a sip of the brandy, taking a look at the Clanner vessels hovering around Tawast-Mah. “KTMC supplies the Clanners with various designs of military equipment. Mechs- walkers, as we’ve trademarked in Neanderthal Space- hovercraft, artillery systems. We have a civilian line of loader walkers too, if you happen to know anyone in the industrial field.”

Dolev pointed to the vessels outside. “Those Clanners use our equipment, and are our main advertising branch outside of us. While we didn’t see a live field test of the equipment today, Haoyu, Aiguo, the Sydonian front, and nearly every system in the Morian Traverse has seen these mechs and hovercrafts used.” Dolev pulled up a holographic display on his Datapad, showing Clanners using the mechs in a variety of conflicts, before then showing a simple breakdown of what they were capable of. “Military grade armor, sensors and systems suited for scouting and target designation. One of our key features is the Modular system. Kay-T mechs offer support for near infinite combinations of weapon systems. If you want it using an in-house plasma machine gun? We can do that. Want a walker to be a fast moving mortar platform? We can do that. AA battery? We can do that too. It’s all modular.”

Aaron politely glanced at the holographic imagery of the KTMC hardware being displayed. He silently runs a command through his implant and suddenly the starry deep space view above them shifts. The stars remain, as do Tawast-Mah and the Clanner ships but they become more distant than before. Shivering images of different Kay-T mechs walk through the cold vacuum. Some fire, some seem to mount invisible obstacles and others are hit or blown to pieces.

“The modularity is a key factor we’ve been considering.” Aaron states softly while facing Dolev. “We’ve reviewed a lot of combat footage and reports from the current conflicts, not least from Haoyu and Aiguo.” Aaron looked up and pointed at an empty area of the viewscreen. Within seconds it got filled with footage of smaller, man sized, walker-drones with two or four legs. Some carried materiel while others were equipped with heavy machine guns or other squad support weapons for heads. “Our domestic lines are mainly light loaders and light fire support units for integrated infantry support. While good at their specific niche the conflict with Azha has indicated a need for some sort of larger medium sized unit to amplify urban warfare utility."

At the center of the ceiling images merged to show the smaller Roman drones walking alongside some of the Kay-T models. “Our own R&D is predisposed with other commitments at the moment and we already know that your products work along the combat parameters that we’re expecting. That’s why we’re interested in a full line of some systems while we’d also like to buy just the walker-base of some models to test out our own weapon systems for possible integration.”

Dolev looked at the Roman drones then back at Aaron. “Buying directly from us can be arranged. We were, however, looking to set up industries within the URR itself.” Dolev went back to his datapad, showing images of KTMC factories and their workings, with employed labor. Images of Haoyu and Aiguo’s destroyed infrastructure also appeared. “A lot of infrastructure on the Azhani and Roman border was destroyed in the war, perpetuated by Azhani droids and Kalakari terrorists. KTMC would like to have some industries in one of these systems, and help with reconstruction in the area.”

Dolev wiped his forehead, before showing a larger map showcasing the Hyperlane network which bisects the URR. “Any industry we set up on Haoyu and Aiguo would have to be limited, however, if even possible. With the dual partnership with Azha and still hostile forces on planets, this would be a completely civilian project. Kay-T’s industrial loader mechs do not have the systems in place to mount weaponry. Obviously, anyone can jerry-rig a weapon to any hard point. But the on-board console only allows for lifter actions and loader arms. Perfect for clearing debris and land for the URR.”

Dolev then stood up and went back and forth around the projector before looking at Aaron. “Our main goal is setting up works in the URR itself. Specifically on or near the hyperlane network Nexus-bound. Chaoxiang, Huoxin, Tuxuan, Tanyu, and Nuwa are all interested systems. We’d deploy automatic systems to help assemble the mechs, while employing local labor. Now that labor can be dependent on what the URR wants; since the URR is our main customer, we could see the employment of local citizens who want prospects in the industrial zone, with opportunities of career advancement in the field.”

Dolev looked at what appeared to be an inbound call from Clan Scarlet Wolf, and quickly tried to wrap up his ramblings. “We’d mostly be looking for engineers and technicians to support our lines and find any malfunctions in the industry. If not, droids would be deployed, and our own from Mazekya proper would oversee the facilities. Obviously, with non-droid labor, promotions in KTMC can be expected going up to system manager. With our work with the URR, we expect KTMC to be profitable in any of these marked systems. Though if the URR has a different perspective on where our industries can be located, well… I’d have to see if Kay-T is willing.”

Aaron didn’t answer directly. A wordless command through his implant caused the images of drones and mechs above to be replaced with a star map. A glowing line illuminated the Kalian hyperlane running from Syahwat to Yuchen where the hyperlane continued through Sydonian space all the way to the Nexus. “I see your point.” Aaron conceded while his eyes went from the star map back to Dolev. “I wasn’t aware of KTMC’s ambitions but of course, hyperlane access would mean a lot…” Aaron’s eyes turned distant as he tried to remember something. “If I remember correctly… beyond some limited access through the Itahxian Kidrion system… Mazekya at large lacks hyperlane access.” Aaron’s hazel eyes met Dolev’s before he looked up at the glowing hyperlane above. “For a corporation like the KTMC I would consider Chaoxian’s industrial capacity to be of primary interest. Although details would have to be hashed out together with representatives of the Yonghéng Syndicate… which can be easily arranged. Another alternative would be the Zixin system, which wouldn’t require any middlemen… and my government would be interested in seeing further expansion and success in Zixin."

While he had been speaking the great panorama above them had changed to show zoomed in images of the Chaoxian and Zixin systems. The former with its multiple industrial worlds and heavily militarized defences with billions of Kùzhì clones slaving away in Syndicate factories. Meanwhile the latter was less industrialized in total output with its terrestrial planets still suffering from the scars of the Roman-Kalakari War but the system was free from any Kalakari remnants and was run with a fully Roman administration. Its logistics and distribution centers were also on par with Chaoxian just from the fact that most trade from the Roman core worlds entered the Kalian hyperlane at Zixin.

Aaron’s eyes avoided Dolev for a moment and he seemed to simply ponder the wonder of space as depicted on the ceiling. When he eventually returned his hazel gaze to the Neanderthal he wore his lopsided smile once more. “I take it that KTMC would be interested in building facilities that, not just service our needs but are capable of producing most if not all of your lineup… Maybe going as far as to say, something that would count as a full Clanner resupply station?”

Dolev took another drink from the brandy, before popping back another grape. “It’d be impossible to deny that the facility which makes Kay-T mechs could be fully serviceable to the Clanners. After all, the dimensions of a Neanderthal and Human are naturally quite similar. With the current working relations with the Clanners, we believe that it is a long term safe bet that these relations will continue to be good. We’d like KTMC to serve one main purpose to the URR: be the main manufacturing corporation for all mechs and adjacent designs. Now, not neccessarily do they have to be of our designs. If the URR wants, we are fully capable of production facilities that respect their own prints. We even had a design that the Romans may be interested in.”

Dolev opened up a projection on his Datapad, of a LW-00-BF ‘bullfrog’, fashioned in the ‘memento mori’ style of the Romans: with an oversized skull decoration centered on it, which Dolev had a little chuckle at. “Something the eggheads cooked up as a design theory. But the KTMC is willing to modify our standard line to fit it into the URR military. Really, anything can be developed to the URR’s liking, though more facilities would be required as necessary.”

Dolev leaned back in his chair, thinking to himself. “Zixin… It wasn’t directly on our radar due to it being an underdeveloped system. Kay-T would like customers for their products, after all. A subsidization and assistance in construction of our factories would make it on the table, and help create jobs in the system. Sweeten the deal, I suppose?”

Aaron had smiled as the mockup of the ‘bullfrog’ had been shown. That skeletal reminder of how fleeting and vulnerable life was had a much less dreaded meaning to most Romans compared to what the rest of the galaxy seemed to think of it. He turned his head and took in Dolve’s last words with a nod. “For you I understand that Chaoxian would be both the cheapest and fastest option to get production at scale going. It’s also a heavily militarized system. The only benefit that Zixin provides is the larger civilian infrastructure for trade and logistics. Faster access to the Roman core systems for your civilian products and much more trade freighters actually stopping in system, compared to Chaoxian. Even Guild Barges regularly moor at Zixin.”

Aaron, who had been nursing his cup of tea while seemingly not drinking much, stepped around and reached for a single grape that he rolled between his fingers before taking it in his mouth. “We are very happy with our long and working relationship with the Clanners. Silver Fangs, Skin-Walker, Bronze Bulls, Black Hounds and so on.” Aaron’s head cocked to the ceiling where the Scarlet Wolf ships remained. “The list is long. We would stand to benefit from having a fully geared resupply base for the Clanners inside our territory. I’m sure that my government can make arrangements so that a production deal in Zixin wouldn’t be a loss for either of us?”

The main screen in the room buzzed as a Scarlet Wolf Clanner buzzed into frame, armored to the teeth. He was inside of Tawast-Mah, and clearly held a rank above the rest. “This is Lieutenant Dash of Clan Scarlet Wolf. Tawast-Mah has been secured. We will expect our resources by month’s end. As always, we respect continued business with those willing to pay.” The screen then buzzed off.

Dolev smiled and looked at Aaron. “Then that can work for us at KTMC. If the URR is able to figure out how to make Zixin logistically sound, we can begin construction in the system immediately. Once established, we can expand in neighboring systems and set up further industries to benefit both the URR and its Clanner bands. If there are no objections to this,” Dolev took a short moment to pick out his teeth. “Kay-T mechs will agree to the deal.”

Aaron had worn a thin smile as Lieutenant Dash reported on the Clanner’s success in what would end up being reported as a raid on Tawast-Mah. His thin smile had broadened as Dolev then agreed to the premise of their deal as outlined. Aaron took a few calm steps closer to the hefty neanderthal and held out his hand. “All details can be arranged, Mr Meishar. A pleasure doing business with you.”

Dolev shook Aaron’s, a wide grin on his face. “And a pleasure meeting you, mister Shore. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be saving the rest of that Sechet Brandy for my colleagues. It’ll be a long trip back to Mazekya proper.” The Neanderthal said with a small wink of his eye.

The Vacant Chair

The book he was handling had a broken spine, and LeQuay set it on the side of the two piles. The pile that he meant to keep. He did not have a particular reason why. It was a minor history of the Alvast settlement, written four centuries before he was born. The cover was worn, and the text inside was badly arranged. He had never finished it in all the years he owned it, but he had carried it through six residences and two wars in his life as as a statesman.

Behind him the screen was talking. He had left it on when he sat down next to the boxes, and it lit the corner of the room with the flat marble wash of the Aruthian Assembly floor. He did not look at it yet. He was trying to figure out an order to stack his books.

They had come to him in all different times of his career. Gifts, most of them. Every ministry that wanted something from the Chancellery had learned early that he could not be moved with wine or with women or with the usual instruments, and so they brought him books instead, thinking it a harmless flattery. It was. He kept them all the same. Aruthian history, Aruthian verse, Aruthian law. The entire civilization, bound in leather, pressed flat and handed across his desk by men who had probably never read a page of it.

He set the settlement history down and reached for the next. This one he did not remember. A slim volume, the title worn off the cloth, and when he opened it a card slid out from between the pages with a name he had not thought of in nine years. Dead now. He put the card back where it had been and set the book on the archive side, and then, after a moment, moved it to the keeping side instead.

'You are stalling', he told himself. Admitting this truth to himself, he turned to face the screen.

The chamber was full. He had expected that. Whatever else could be said of the Assembly, it did not miss a sitting where its own hand was on the balance, and the benches ran green and packed from the floor to the high rear tiers where the junior members sat. The broadcast held its wide angle a moment longer than it needed to, letting the size of the thing settle on whoever was watching. Then it cut down to the well.

The chair at the head of the well was empty. They had draped nothing over it and moved nothing into its place. It was its own kind of message. For eleven years LeQuay had sat in it and he knew to the centimetre how badly it was made for anyone shaped like him. The humans had built their whole chamber for their own bodies and never thought otherwise. He had spent a decade learning to look comfortable in furniture he felt was forced upon him as a quiet insult. He did not miss the chair. He was surprised to find he did not miss it at all.

Speaker Aldous Verrin brought the sitting to order. He did it the way he did everything, without hurry, tapping the block twice and waiting for the room to settle. LeQuay had always thought Verrin the most honest man in the building, which in that building was not a compliment so much as a diagnosis of something dark. An honest Speaker is a man who has decided the rules matter more than the outcome. That is a fine thing to believe until the day the rules deliver you an outcome no one ever wanted. LeQuay found an odd smile at that. He was the victim of it after all.

"The Assembly sits," Verrin said, "to receive the names put before it for the office of Chancellor. The Chair will hear the sponsors."

LeQuay stopped sorting.

The first name he already knew. Everyone had known it for three months. Rufus Jungwe rose from the second bench on the government side and stood while his sponsor read the words into the record, and he stood the way he did everything, with directed intent, and hard steely eyes that missed nothing. He was not a large man. He had the look of a senior doctor who had been told there was an anomaly, who had come personally to find it, and route out the rot. When the sponsor finished, Jungwe inclined his head to the Chair by exactly the degree required and sat down again. Clean. Clear. Professional.

'He will make no mistakes today' LeQuay thought. 'He never does. That's never been the same as being right, and Jungwe has never understood the difference.'

He worked with Jungwe, after all. He had sat across a table from him more times than he could count and had never once seen him surprised. The man carried the state in his head the way a shipwright carries a hull, every load and every stress. The shipyards, the credit houses, the great conglomerates that fed the Navy and were fed by it in turn, all of it ran through Jungwe's ledgers and came out worth it. He would govern the Empire as a going concern. He would keep the accounts. And when the accounts required that a district be closed, or a people be moved, or a promise be quietly not kept, he would do that too, and sleep well. The state was above all. The states survival is paramount.

It was not a small thing, to keep the accounts that Jungwe did. LeQuay had learned that late and at cost. There were worse men in the chamber than Rufus Jungwe. That was rather the trouble with Aruthia. There were many worse men.

The second name took longer. Genifer Malvasi's sponsor was her partner, a woman from the frontier benches who read the nomination badly, stuttered on the formal address, and the government side let her hear their disapproval while she did it. Malvasi herself did not seem to mind. She stood when her name was said and she looked around the chamber, and actually looked at it, at the faces. She was younger than the office wanted and she had come up through the wrong ministries for it. Welfare and Resettlement and the endless grinding business of the Residents Ministry, was work that everyone praised but no one rewarded. The papers called her the Bleeding Heart. They meant it as a wound. She had never once complained about the name.

'They will let her stand', LeQuay thought, because letting her stand costs them nothing, and because a contest with only one runner looks like what it is. A fraud.'

He did not dislike her. He was not sure he was capable of disliking her, which was itself a kind of verdict on her character. She believed the things she said. In eleven years he had met perhaps four members of the Assembly of whom that could be said, and two of them were dead. One had gone mad, and the fourth was standing on the floor of the chamber right now asking three hundred and forty people to hand her a poltical machine she did not understand and could not hold for a season. The machine would eat her. It ate everyone eventually. It had very nearly destroyed him.

The Speaker put the question. LeQuay heard the old formula and found, to his mild irritation, that his throat had tightened at the sound of it, the way an old soldier's hand is said to close when he hears his old march. "The question is that this Assembly nominate to His Imperial Majesty a name for the office of Chancellor. The Chair will divide the House on the first name. On the name of Rufus Jungwe, those content will pass to the right, those not content to the left. Clear the bar. Lock the doors on my order."

They rose, all at once. The green benches emptying upward and outward toward the groupings. The broadcast lost its single clean picture and became a dozen small ones. The doors, the corridors, the tellers taking their posts with their tally-boards. It was a thing LeQuay had always found faintly obscene to watch from the outside, this business of grown men and women queuing in corridors to be counted like coin, and he had never let himself think about it too hard while he was inside it. From here, with a book in his hands and no vote to cast, he found he could not look away.

He knew what he was watching for before he had let himself admit it. He was watching the centre benches. The unaligned members. The ones who belonged to no faction on the floor because they belonged instead to interests that had no bench: the old houses with their names and their debts, the security men who wore no uniform, the boards of the three or four concerns large enough that the Empire was, in a real sense, their landlord and nothing else. They had no candidate on the floor today. That was the thing worth watching. A bloc that size, with no name of its own to divide for, could do only one useful thing with itself.

It could observe.

The tellers counted. It was fast. LeQuay watched the numbers come up on the corner of the screen and did the arithmetic before the broadcast could, because he had done this particular arithmetic many times. The answer was always there, in the gap between the content lobby and the whole size of the House. Jungwe had his own people, and a good chunk of the frontier and most of the industrial yard concerns. It was a strong showing. It was not a majority of the House, and a nomination required a majority of the House and not merely of those voting. The centre had gone to neither lobby at all. They had sat. Three dozen members, perhaps more, he could not tell, had simply remained in their seats and let themselves be recorded as present and not voting. By doing nothing at all, they had made certain that doing something was impossible.

The Speaker's voice came back over the shot of the numbers. "The name of Rufus Jungwe has not carried."

The chamber made a sound then, low and wide, a collective groan knowing that it was going to be a long contest. LeQuay set the book down carefully, on neither pile.

They divided on the second name because the rules required it. Malvasi's showing was worse and everyone had known it would be, and she took it standing, which was more than most of them would have managed. The centre sat again. The centre had not come here to choose. It had come here to make sure no one else could.

"The name of Genifer Malvasi has not carried," said the Speaker. "The Chair has no name to return."

And there it was. LeQuay had known the words were coming and still they landed on him with a small physical weight, somewhere below the breastbone. It hit him in the place where he had once kept the belief that institutions could be trusted to work if only enough honest men attended to them. Speaker Verrin was honest. Verrin had followed every rule. The rules had brought the House to a chair with no one in it and no lawful way to fill it, and Verrin could do nothing now but say so, and await another nomination, or for the hand of God to arrive and push someone into the seat.

The floor did not take it well. LeQuay could hear it building even through the flattening of the broadcast. The frontier benches on their feet and shouting, someone demanding a further division and someone else demanding the centre candidates to resign, and all the while, the centre said nothing. Nothing at all. A junior member near the well threw a folder of order papers into the centre aisle and the sheets fanned out white across the green carpet.

Verrin tapped the block. Called for order. It did nothing. He tapped it again and let the noise of its failure sit for a moment. Then he did the only thing the rules left him.

"The Chair can hear no further business in this condition," Verrin said. His voice did not rise, It spoke with authority, it did not need to. "The lobbies will be cleared. The doors are opened. Members will withdraw. This sitting is suspended, and the Chair will not receive the House again until it is fit to be received."

Sergeants moved into the shot along the sides of the chamber, and the broadcast pulled back to its wide angle again for the first time since the well. The last picture was of the whole green room draining upward and out through its doors, over three hundred withdrawing from a chamber they had rendered useless, and at the head of the empty well the one chair everyone wanted but no one had gone near all day.

LeQuay reached over and turned the screen off.

The room was very quiet after that. The residence had been built for a human family of some standing, three generations back. It had the good bones but bad dark windows for its age. In the late night light, the boxes of books stood around him like a small city he had been meant to be dismantling. He had told himself, when they gave him the house, that he would be glad of the quiet. He had earned the quiet. Eleven years. The long road to the Morian Traverse. He was here now at the end of it, and all the dead of the Traverse were placed at his doorstep, by men who had voted for every ship that went there. He had earned the quiet a hundred times over. He had looked forward to it the way a man looks forward to sleep.

And yet, here now, he was not glad of it. He sat with that and did not pretend otherwise. He had been blessed with a mind where pretending had never been among the gifts he was able to embrace. Perhaps that's why he was elected. He had no imagination.

It was not that he wanted the chair. He had meant it in the Assembly and he meant it now. He did not want the chair, would not have taken it back if they came to the door tonight and offered it, could not have sat in it another year without breaking underneath its weight. It was not envy. Envy he would almost have welcomed. Envy is a cold thing but placeable. This was not it. It was that he knew what a hung chair was worth to the people who had hung it. He had watched the centre sit on its hands and he had recognised the technique because he had used it, once or twice, in his worst years. You do not need to win a chamber when you can simply prevent it from finishing. You do not need a name on the floor if you can keep every name off it, and let the paralysis do the arguing, and wait, patient and unhurried, for the day the House is so sick of its own emptiness that it will hand the office to whoever promises to fill it. That day always comes. In all his years studying Commonwealth History, he had never once seen it fail to come to pass. And the name that fills the chair on that day is often never a name that stood on the floor. It is a name that waited off it for its day.

He did not know the name at current. That was the part that sat below his breastbone and would not move. He had run the machine for eleven years and he had thought he knew every hand that reached for its levers. He had turned the screen off just now on that plain fact. Someone had ordered the centre to sit. Someone had done the arithmetic before him, from a room he could not see. They had looked at a divided House and a Traverse full of dead men and a Empire full of angry ones. Whoever that was, had not seen a crisis; but an opening.

'I would have seen the same thing', LeQuay thought, and disliked it, and pushed it down like bile.

He looked at the two piles of books he had made, the keeping and the archive, and could no longer remember on what principle he had been dividing them. It seemed suddenly a foolish way to have spent an afternoon, sorting the leftovers of an old career into what he would carry and what he would let go when he should be letting go of it all. He picked up the settlement history again, the one with the broken spine. The four hundred years of Alvast rendered by a man long dead. He turned it over in his hands. Then he set it down on the archive side, where it belonged, where he should have put it in the first place. He did not turn the screen back on, and he did not go to bed. For a long time he simply sat among the books in the dim light and waited, with a singular thought in his head. Perhaps it was time, to redo the lights, and see what lurks in the dark.

Knights of steel

It was a cold day on Yorgistov the moon of Volstrix, Kurt Von Henneg sat atop his tank an old VB2 heavy battle tank otherwise know as a “Steel Lion”, a cigarette in his mouth while his men heated themselves by the engine.

They had been placed on this moon for a combat effectiveness test of the new JT-1, where the VB’s had tracks they had a hover system, where it had shells it had a lazer cannon, where it had a true spotter it had an ai capable of locating targets and the weak points within their armor.

Much of this sat poorly with the old tanker, the VB’s had been a staunch symbol for the estates an their power, and those who were worthy were made commanders of their steel steeds.

He exhaled a cloud of smoke then looked down at his the radio operator. “Any news son?” He asked the young man, he couldn’t be over eighteen yet he had volunteered all the same, by his red eyes Kurt knew he was Volstrian. No lack of fervor to join from lads who had most likely fought more upfront battles than he had his entire career.

“Yes sir.” the boy said not shivering like his other comrades. “The exercise is to start in an hour, we will be facing the new 1st Armored Grenadier Division.” He said in a matter of fact tone which frustrated the commander.

“Alright boys get the practice shells loaded, I want victory.” He said with a bite, he didn’t like being used as a show, as an excuse to fully put down the old and let the now Director to push out all that was sacred.

Kurt himself had agreed with much of the Directors ideals, though he disagreed on the need to completely upend the military structure and gear. But he had seen the new infantry divisions, larger more uniform, newer gear. The holdovers from the old ways were few and far between and had mostly been regarded as garrisons now steadily forgotten relics of a time passed. Take the Volstrian guards, the true regiment had been taken out during the siege but all the same they were revived as a moral booster, a symbol to the Volstrians that they held and they can again.

Such spectacles frustrated the commander to no end, so he wanted victory to deprive these rookies of the satisfaction. When the young man at the radios told him it was time to begin, they began talking amongst the different crews and driving forward like steel clad knights.

He closed the hatch and sat into her commanders chair, the screens a dark green and black.

“Commander on the horizon!” The spotter a middle aged woman from cateye said.

Kurt looked at his screen which projected. A row of burgandy tanks sending dust and snow flying in their wake, they were fast much faster than his.

“All units prepare to fire!” He barked as the radio man relayed the order, before a single VB fired a lazer smacked into the tank to their left, knocking them out of the exercise.

“Damnit fire damn you!” He barked as his gunner a young brawny man from Attica quickly sat in his chair, a large canteen of coffee to his right.

“Yes sir!” He answered, lining up the shot and firing, their screen poped up with the message "Deflected." Before they know it another tank was taken out. Though one of their own had taken one of the JT’s out relating quickly over comms where to hit them.

Kurt’s crew fired again, this time the screen flashed “Hit,destroyed.” Kurt couldn’t help but smile but it was quickly washed as his own tank was hit trying to maneuver around the enemy, its systems shut off, they had been hit in the engine area but they were not fully knocked out.

“Damnit, use what we have and take more of the bastards with us.” He barked as his gunner and spotter began chattering amongst themselves as shot after shot rained some hits, some misses, some knockouts, some deflections but once again, he was hit and the screen flashed red. “Destroyed.”

The commander's face fell as he opened the hatch, taking from his greatcoat pocket the pack of cigarettes and lighting another, he watched as one by one the VB’s were picked off, the JT was to quick in comparison to their older counter parts, much like the Clanner tanks during the war. Many like his own tank were destroyed in the siege of New Sydonia be it by Clanner weaponry or Roman.

It did not take long for the exercise to come to an end a resounding victory for the JT’s proving they were the superior weapon. Afterwards he was called to the military headquarters on the moon. Sitting in the chair was the Director himself puffing away at a pipe looking at printed out reports of the events of the day.

“You did well Captain Henneg, all the reports say you took charge of your comrades and rallied them to force as pyrrhic a victory as could be granted.” The Director said in a almost amused tone.

“Yes sir I thought it would prove a disservice to my men to try anything less than victory.” He said as he came it attention.

“Relax Captain and have a seat. I’m told you prefer cigarettes?” He said motioning to the chair in front of him which Kurt quickly filled.

“Yes sir.” He said as he sat,the Director handing him a pack.

“I prefer a pipe now but during my days in Azani space I took a liking to this brand.” The Director said with a unusual friendly demeanor, which took the old tank commander off guard.

He looked a the box Colonial Selects it was an old brand which hailed from the ancient times when Theia had sent its sons and daughter into the stars.
“Thank you sir.” He said striking his old flip lighter to ignite it, the flavor was deep and rich, you can’t hide money especially when you’re tasting the fruits of its splendor.

“I’m guessing you’re wondering why I’ve called you here? Well I’m in need of good generals, and your rap sheet reads like a man is find very useful, and you come highly recommended.” The director said letting out a cloud of his own. “I need someone over the armor, and I want you to be that man.”

Kurt sat stunned for a moment. “I must respectfully decline sir I’m not suited for such a task, I’m merely a tank-“

The Director held his hand up to stop him.

“Herr Henneg I’m offering you to be a part of the great change that I’m heading, a breaking of the chains the shadow of the commonwealth has laid upon our homes soul. Would you deny the people’s need for you?” The man in white said his tone had changed, almost threateningly so.

“I.. no sir I’ll do it.”

“Splendid pack your things you’re coming to Pantrum.”

Emerald Beginnings
Keriax, Zarvan System, Vortan Dominion

A school, a water treatment plant, a hospital, a food distributary, a sports arena, a civilian transport hub, a military space hub.

High traffic sites, for the mass distribution, not of desired goods, but for something no one would notice until it was too late. A virus, designed not necessarily to kill but to kill. Not the purpose of Operation Emerald, but merely its first step in a long chain until the desired outcome was met.

---

“I hear VD Team One’s site has already been closed down.”

“It’s acting fast then. It won’t be too long and then the Op will be onto Phase Two.”

“That’s if the Vortans follow through.”

“They’ll have to if they want to keep their planet, quarantine or die.”

Irasha watched Drassas cross to the other side of the warehouse yard as Irasha maintained overwatch from the rooftop of a nearby building. Their op was the one of the last in a long series of ops conducted by other teams, theirs was the twenty-sixth.
The target was a medium-sized refrigerated food distribution hub owned directly by the Vortan government.

“At least once the quarantining begins, things will get going proper. Getting tired of no kill stealth ops,” Irasha said, keeping on a cursory view on Drassas’s current location, instead his attention was kept on the whole, watching for Vortans that may be keeping guard.

Drassas moved up to the side door of the warehouse, visible from where Irasha was sitting, his suit’s stealth module rendering him nearly invisible in the standard range. Drassas pulled a mechanism from his pouch and attached it to the door control, it began cycling through a series of combinations.

“Wonder what two-bit hacker Central paid to get ahold of these codes,” Drassas said, as his head took cautious looks to his left and right.

“You think Central paid somebody? They could’ve just shot somebody after the job.”

“No, no. Definitely paid, they spent too much time and effort on this to just shoot a guy. I’m gonna guess some Akallian with uh, pink feathers, they paid far more than they were worth to catfish some poor Vortan middle-manager to give over the code list.”

The Unlocker finally discovered the door code, and the warehouse was now open to the pair of Thaullens. Drassas cautiously stepped inside and swept his rifle left, center, and then right.

“Immediate interior clear, holding here. Catch up, quickly.”

“Moving,” Irasha worked his way down the side of the building he had taken overwatch upon, sliding down a pole than had been bolted on, and then quickly covered across the ground, letting his stealth module do most of the work as he sprinted over. Irasha covered Drassas’s back and the pair entered the warehouse.

“My bet is they hired a Lareshi woman, got her to make some Vortan he was special because he’s a warehouse manager rather than some colonel or something,” Irasha said as he scanned his rifle scope over the paths and shelves of the warehouse interior, “Probably cheaper and easier than a hacker.”

“Ya, but that’s just boring.”

“As opposed to some guy getting catfished? Security room up ahead, take left on the door. Remember, maintain no kill order.”

Drassas flanked left on the security room door as instructed, and Irasha took right. Irasha switched his vision module on his armor to thermal settings and peered through the thin wall. “Two targets, one at control station, second nearby at a desk. Prioritize target at station, then incapacitate secondary.”

Drassas breached the door and fired several stun darts into the vortan that was sitting at the security station; Irasha followed and fired upon the second vortan sitting nearby.

“You wanna do the override or do you want me to?” Irasha asked.

“No, I’ll do it. You handle clean-up.”

Drassas produced the device he had used to unlock the warehouse door earlier and connected to the electronics of the security station and began plugging away overriding and wiping out any trace of Thaullen presence at the site. Irasha checked the vitals of the two incapacitated vortans and then carefully plucked the darts from their bodies and then posed them so it appeared to any investigators that would come later that the vortans had simply fallen asleep.

“We’re clean and clear, systems wiped and in our control. Let’s hurry up and do the drop and then exfil.”

“Roger.”

Departing from the security room, Drassas and Irasha split-up, taking different sections of the warehouse, with Drassas taking the northern side and Irasha the south, planning to meet in the middle.
Each worked down their given section, row-by-row, quickly and quietly. Installing nearly invisible little slips of tape on various boxes, cannisters, and other containers. Each slip itself a sample of the disease they had here to spread. The slips would eventually degrade the longer they were exposed to oxygen, until the disease sample was finally free, being dispersed wherever the product it was attached to was.
With their task completed, the two reunited at the door they had entered from, exiting quickly. One crossed across the yard, established overwatch and then the other crossed. Eventually the pair cleared the warehouse compound and departed from the area entirely, beginning the long hike back to the designated exfil position.

“Did you get a good look at what you stuck the VDs on?” Drassas asked.

“A little bit.”

“Anything stand out? Don’t know much about Vortan food.”

“Chuchil. It looked like little yellow eggs, with like rice? Kinda looked gross.”

“Weird.”

The Same Deep Water As You
Khiihko Prime, Khiihko System, Roman Space. 6780.
The teledrama on the screen was an old show that Asya Maurer returned to rewatch every now and then. It was a guilty pleasure of hers. The beautiful couple that found one another during the last days of high school due to his father’s work transfer. How cruelty, injustice and a desire to prove oneself drove them apart but not truly. How they had promised to return to one another once they had achieved their goals and how they kept running into one another as the years went by. Always reaffirming the promise that one day, not today, but one day they would both have time for one another. Their love story wasn’t even the main plot and Asya didn’t really know any show that depicted any relationship in such a way. So insane and vain yet mature and self-aware beyond reason. It was the kind of story that should have annoyed her, and in a way it did, but she kept coming back to it anyway. There was something comforting about knowing exactly where every conversation would go and exactly which mistakes they would make. She was at the scene where the secondary female love interest was confessing her love to the male protagonist. The sound didn’t come from the telescreen but was played directly inside her mind through her Neurolink implant. She knew the replies by heart at this stage. At least the ones from the major scenes. Her lips wordlessly mouthed the words as the male protagonist rejected the secondary female and good for her, Asya thought. That woman was a sociopath, openly so, and she could never take the place of Reika! The music swelled as the scene alternated between lingering late night shots of the unnamed city and closeups on the face of the male protagonist. Even now her chest felt a little tight at the scene, both from relief and dread that maybe he would change his mind anyway. He wouldn’t, she knew, but the light reflected in the actor’s eyes sold the melancholy of the scene so well. It was almost embarrassing how well it worked on her despite knowing every beat of it. The montage lingered on his back as he started to walk away towards the gleaming city lights. The credits rolled and Asya paused it before the next episode could load in. She had no intention of watching the next episode tonight. That was what she told herself anyway. But she knew that she would.

She shut it down. Turned her head back and breathed deeply. Her eyes closed as she let her emotions settle. The sudden silence after the music was almost jarring. She had spent the better part of a year in the Morian Traverse. First during the waining months of the war and now in the peace that had followed. Despite the war being over little felt like it had changed at all. The entire Traverse was devastated. Five thousand light years of scorched earth thanks to Clanners and roaming bands of Yazata. Even though others had done the raiding and pillaging her and the state she represented bore the responsibility in all truth. They had been pressed. The navy had been stretched thin on multiple fronts. So what option did they have then to let anarchy loose and have innocence drown? If the Aruthian’s charlatan god desired the traverse so much then he could rule over ash and star dust. They hadn’t hoped to be able to secure a peace that split the Traverse. That’s why they had given free reign to mercenaries, bandits and Clanners to gorge themselves on any resource they could capture. It had been ugly. It had been cynical. It had also been necessary. At least that was the word she preferred to use when she thought about it. But then something had happened. The universe had blinked. The Mazekyans had entered the Traverse as well and claimed worlds for their own. Not a word had been relayed to the Romans. Not a single message despite their attempts for months to get the Mazekyans involved. Roman forces had stayed out of their way but there had been weeks where they feared that maybe the Mazekyans would have joined the invaders. That would have spelled doom but the enigmatic aliens hadn’t turned on the Romans. Instead the Aruthians had finally lost their nerve and had came crawling to the negotiations table once they had become convinced that the Mazekyans were actually on the Roman side. There had been no such alliance but the only thing that had mattered was that the Aruthians had believed it. Sometimes diplomacy was nothing more than convincing someone else that something was true.

The war had ended. The Morian Traverse had been split up. Eight habitable systems to the Aruthians to choke on and seven to the Romans and Mazekyans. The space was still filled with illicit activity. Asya and her fellow diplomatic corps had worked to ensure that. She had sat with Clanners, haggled with Yazata and entertained simple no-name pirates. Some had been more willing to talk than others. Some had demanded things she couldn't give them, while others had been surprisingly reasonable once the first threats and insults were out of the way. The Clanners had been the best to deal with. They always were. The URR wouldn’t start rebuilding their side of the Morian Traverse for the foreseeable future. They would however ensure that any Aruthian attempt at Morian reinvestment would burn in the cold depths of empty space or end up in the cargo bays of raiders. It was a strange kind of peace, if peace it could even be called. Nothing had truly been settled so much as everyone had agreed to stop shooting for a while. Asya had learned that this was often the closest thing to stability that diplomats were allowed to work with.

Asya pressed a button and the dead telescreen folded down into the table while she stood up and stretched with her hands above her head. She groaned like an old man despite nothing hurting or even feeling mildly inconvenient. The sound made her briefly wonder if she was getting old. She dismissed the thought immediately. She was nowhere near old enough to be making noises like that and yet she had apparently decided to start early. Then she turned around from the table and walked over to her personal fridge. Normally, on a cruiser like the RRS Odoroki no one beyond the captain had a personal fridge and hardly the space for one even if they could. But the Odoroki, like all Roman cruisers of her type, was modular and the section behind her prow weapons compartment, that usually housed extended missile magazines, had been replaced with a leisurely section. The official name was a theatre module but it was just a dedicated VIP module with finer amenities suited for diplomats or other “civilians” that required military transport over extended periods of time. It was one of those luxuries that had seemed ridiculous when she first arrived aboard. After nearly a year of living out of these accommodations she had long since embraced it all.

Asya stared into the depths of her rather empty fridge and grabbed a handful of grapes and an apple. She popped the grapes into her mouth one after another, chewing lazily as she tucked the apple beneath one arm and reached for some hard cheese. Fresh fruit had been scarce over the last year, but the latest resupply at Soglia had brought enough to restock them. She had almost forgotten what it was like to have a choice of fruit rather than simply accepting whatever happened to be available. Hard cheese, at least, had never been a problem. There was always plenty of it and Asya considered that one of the small blessings of life. She found the knife she'd left in the fridge, cut herself a few bite-sized pieces, and closed the door.

The screen built into it had been left in mirror mode and for a moment, she caught herself staring back. Dark almond eyes. Light caramel skin. An oval face framed by thick, dark hair pulled back from her cheeks. Nothing particularly remarkable. Her cheekbones were neither high nor flat, her nose neither broad nor narrow, her lips neither thin nor full. She looked exactly like what she was. Roman. Asya's lips twisted crookedly around the grape she was chewing. She stuck her tongue out at her reflection, then bit into a piece of cheese. As far as Romans went, she was perfectly average. And in that sense perfectly suited as a diplomat. At least, that was what she liked to tell herself. Average meant unremarkable. Unremarkable meant forgettable. And forgettable could sometimes be useful, in the nonthreatening kind of way.

She cursed under her own breath and turned over to place down the pieces of cheese and the apple on the countertop next to the fridge. Then she opened the fridge once more only to pull out a bottle of barley tea that she took a swig of. The cold nutty liquid felt good after the cheese. Before putting the cap back on she poured herself a glass of the golden liquid. She contemplated getting a plate for the cheese and to possibly cut up the apple into nice neat pieces such as her mother had always done. She could already picture the plate, the careful little arrangement, the way her mother would have frowned if she'd simply dumped everything onto the countertop. But she quickly threw that idea out. She couldn’t bother with that and she could just wipe the countertop later. She picked up and bit into the small red apple. Revealing its pale pink marbling as the chunk tore away. Even though it was chilled it was still sweet, flavourful and as crisp as the Minami-Rin type always was. The sharp little crunch seemed almost excessively loud in the quiet room. It was Asya’s favorite kind of apple but that was nothing strange, outside of some stray local favorites across certain planets the medium-small and spotted deep red Minami-Rin remained eternally amongst the top five apples across the union. Never the sweetest nor the most sour. Neither the tastiest nor the largest or the most flavourful. Just there, crisp, aromatic, sweet and sour. A taste of summer.

“Ms. Maurer. We’ll initiate docking procedures with Khiihko Prime’s Sundroni Spaceport within one hour. There’s currently a medium number of ships at the port but we have priority access. Docking procedures should take no more than fortyfive minutes.”

Asya didn’t reply to the priority voice message as it was played through her implant. She didn’t need to and she wasn’t expected to. Not unless she required something that is. She ate the apple and the cheese while leaning against the countertop and contemplating. Looking at her modest living space without truly seeing anything. More or less two hours until she would be at the spaceport and there was still no word on what she was supposed to do. An urgent dispatch had reached her weeks ago to get to the Khiihko system for a time sensitive mission and she had been the only one close enough. Information had been close to nothing but she assumed that it was Clanner related. Many Clanner deals had been ironed out at Khiihko over the decades and the vast marine farms on Khiihko Prime were still producing protein repayments dating back to the height of the Dissolution Wars. Asya slowly chewed on another piece of cheese. As a diplomat she was well aware of the union’s long history with the Clanners that didn’t always get much space in the mainstream.

The Dissolution Wars, or the Long War as it was often called back home, was generally depicted as this pivotal struggle where the union had stood utterly alone against the howling dark. Commonwealth forces, Aruthians, Sydonians and so on… ‘No one is coming’, had been the Roman sentiment ever since the Battle of Inzali during the Roman-Kalakari War. Yet the Clanners had been there for sure. On both sides, yes, and getting paid, yes. Asya wasn’t under any illusion that they hadn’t been there out of enlightened self-interest yet there they had been. Clan Skin-walker, Silver Fangs, Black Hound, Bronze Bulls… Millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of Clanner clones had died on the union’s payroll. That was worth something, wasn’t it? Sacrifice was supposed to matter, wasn’t it?

She took another bite of the apple and stared at the half-eaten fruit in her hand. It was an absurd thing to think about while eating an apple. Perhaps that was exactly why the thought had come to her? There was something about ordinary things that made the deeper questions surface. A glass of tea. A piece of cheese. An apple that tasted of summer. Things that existed because someone, somewhere, had grown them and packed them and shipped them across hundreds of light years. Shaking her head she finished the apple down to the core and tossed it into the waste chute.

When she later was walking down the long central corridor of the VIP module towards the access elevator she stalled her steps. The entire ceiling was one gently curved display that acted like a window into outer space. The Sundroni Spaceport was on full display, a large disk-shaped structure connected to a space elevator that looked as thin as a spider’s silken tether. “Maurer to Bridge,” she said. Speaking the words out that only needed to be thought. Her dark eyes lingered intently on a section of the spaceport’s docks. Multiple ships were docked and most were freighters of familiar designs but something had drawn her attention. Gleaming with the reflections of stars was a white ship of a design she had only ever seen hinted at in the most rare of briefings. “Yes, Ms. Maurer?” answered the polite voice over the neurolink’s built in com system. Asya was slow to respond as she took in the sight and her lips didn’t move once she replied. “What’s that white ship that’s docked to Sundroni?”

There was a short pregnant pause as if the voice on the other end had been caught off guard. “Ms. Maurer? That’s an Archon ship.”

Wicked Game
Co-written with the Mazekya
Read ‘The Same Deep Water As You’ before this one
Khiihko Prime, Khiihko System, Roman Space. 6780.

“What’s the hold up?” Asya asked through her implant and a bored sounding voice answered on the other end. “You’ve gone down the elevators yourself, ma’am. It takes time.”
Asya cut the link and let out a wordless sigh. She did know. She had come down the space elevator yesterday and the descent itself took almost a day. It had given her time to mentally prepare herself for the idea of meeting a Mazekyan Archon and she couldn’t remember whenever or even if that had happened before. Not personally at least. There had been plenty of reports, briefings and second-hand accounts. Images of Mazekyan ships had filled military briefings for years. Grainy footage of Archons had been replayed and analyzed by people who probably knew more about the aliens than Asya ever would. Most of her experience with them was based on stock footage dating back to the Commonwealth era. None of that quite prepared her for actually sitting across a table from one.

When she had gotten onboard the Sundroni Spaceport she had received her first and only proper rundown on the diplomatic mission at hand. Field Diplomats like Asya herself, rarely worked with a lot of information but they were usually given as much as possible that could be reasonable for an objective. This time the utter lack of information didn’t match the stated objective however. Something that had Asya somewhat uneasy. She had spent the space elevator ride down contemplating it. Then she had spent the last few hours of yesterday shopping around for some local clothing on the upper levels of the city of Nantama. She had told herself that it was simply good diplomatic sense. Showing some respect for local customs, looking presentable and making a good first impression. It had also been a convenient excuse to avoid thinking too much about the meeting itself.

That had at least given her something else to think about and the city of Nantama was a beautiful thing. Centered around the Sundroni space elevator most of the city was under water with a few rounded towers sticking out above the ocean surface. The talks themselves would be held in the large conference room that Asya now stood in. Surrounded by a foot of armorglass the entire room was one big ball with an inlaid black marble floor just below its center. All around was the deep dark blue water of Khiihko Prime’s planetwide ocean. At a depth of 200 meters the room sat at the edge of the twilight zone where the sun’s rays started to lose much of its brightness as the water slowly turned darker and darker below. It was at this level one could expect to see life belonging from the upper and deeper zones and there was life swimming around outside of the armorglass. Shoals of fish and fish-like creatures as well as jellyfish in numerous shapes and colors were all sharing the waters. Having been long since used to the presence of humans in their aquatic cities the marine life didn’t seem bothered by the glass and steel nor the fact that there was movement, vibrations and light being constantly generated. Every now and then something larger passed beyond the glass, briefly blocking out the dim light from above before disappearing into the blue. Asya found herself following them with her eyes even when she knew there was no point in doing so.

Asya looked on at the fascinating display with a pleased smile. Khiihko Prime truly was a beautiful world, she thought, and she regretted that she rarely got to visit any of the union’s few ocean worlds. Most such worlds were all generally agreed up to be very beautiful, at least to people that enjoyed sealife and Khiihko Prime was a pearl. Asya felt confident as she got used to the room and she was happy with her choice of dress. Having felt yesterday that she ought to get something local for this occasion she had abandoned her otherwise rather drab and grey work outfit. Instead she wore a suit made of a fine black satin. The pants were slightly loose below the knees without being flared and the fabric was heavy enough to fall naturally and feel graceful instead of flimsy. The black suit jacket went to her waist and had a crossed collar with the left side folded over the right. The right side of the jacket, excluding the right arm, was covered in a jacquard fabric that at a distance appeared like fish scales in blues and turquoise. But once up close one could see that the pattern actually depicted flower petals in neat rows and there were some greens, reds and golds there as well. The merger of flowers and aquatic themes were a local favorite, Asya had learned but the cut of the suit itself was more akin to Roman high fashion. She didn’t consider herself vain in any way but she did feel beautiful. The way the light from the water outside interacted with the dark suit and covered it in undulating waves of oily light almost made the clothes feel alive.

She turned slightly and caught her reflection in one of the darker sections of the armorglass. It was not nearly as clear as the mirror in her quarters but enough to see the outline of herself. She looked composed. More composed than she felt at least. That would have to be good enough. Diplomacy was, in part, the art of appearing to be certain about things that you were not certain about. She looked back toward the empty entrance of the conference room that remained almost eerily quiet. A formal alliance, she thought. That was what she had been sent here to secure. The thought still seemed absurd. The Mazekyans had entered the Morian Traverse without warning, taken two habitable systems and somehow managed to terrify the Aruthians into ending a war they had been willing to fight for years. Now Asya was supposed to sit down with one of their Archons and convince them that the Union was worth having as a formal ally. Could it even be done?

No instructions on what she could offer. No instructions on what she could promise. Not even a clear explanation of why the Mazekyans would want one. Did they want one? Surely someone somewhere had communicated something!? Surely no Archon would be here otherwise. Asya rubbed her thumb against the side of her index finger and watched another shoal of small silver fish turn as one outside the glass. She had negotiated with pirates. She had negotiated with Clanners. She had negotiated with Yazata who had wanted to kill her before they had even learned her name. None of that had prepared her for this. She straightened her jacket and stared out into the deep blue. At least she looked good.

Asya’s eyes slowly became aware of one of the darker shadows gliding through the water outside. It came closer and then it felt as if it had disappeared for a moment, only to reappear. A long and slender shape emerged and slowly became visible. Powerful and built for speed, Asya’s dark eyes widened at the sight. A large triangular head on a short but muscular neck. The main body followed behind it with two pairs of oar-like fins that moved with slow deliberate strokes. Behind it stretched a long and flat tail, its undulating movement giving the creature both its forward momentum and an almost otherworldly grace. A Khiihkar. One of the main large predators of the planet’s oceans. Not the largest, even more horrible things were known to exist deeper down, but the Khiihkar was most plentiful and the most aggressive of the planet’s Leviathans.

Asya took half a step back as she suddenly felt very small before the great beast. The long serpentine body swam along and it felt as if one of its eyes stared right through Asya even if the creature was too far away for her to truly see such a thing. It looked as if it angled itself slightly away from the ball of armorglass that now felt thin even if Asya knew that she was safe. But knowing and feeling were different things. She gasped as the creature suddenly propelled itself with speed. Just a slightly more aggressive movement of its powerful tail and it had turned around completely. Remarkably narrow from the front, like a Roman battleship, the Khiihkar now faced Asya dead on from beyond the glass. Its long fins moved with an agonizing slowness as the dark and powerful creature simply floated outside. Both its yellow eyes now saw Asya, she was sure of it, and she caught herself holding her breath.

”A stunning creature and powerful creature. Yet easily manipulated. I’d hope that is not what the Romans offer us, Asya?” Her name repeated to her in her own head chilled Asya, but quickly she turned to see before her the Archon. Veiled in deep blue fabrics, The Archon looked at Asya, the only details visible by the blue glow coming from the waters were those golden eyes, whose look held no pupil. “Shall we begin, or must we continue to gawk at lessers?”

Asya suddenly knew the name of who stood before her, despite not having heard it before. Ilayah was her name. She was an Arete of Mazekya, and she was here to negotiate with her now. Ilayah stood with the blue fabrics surrounding her, decorated in whirling gold patterns of circles, arches, and rings. The fabric was loose, but showed slightly her figure. Underneath, the slightest appearance of an undersuit could be seen from her arms, as she pulled her arms back beneath the cloak which once more shrouded her frame. “Your… dress is atypical of the Romans who work for your government. Tell me, is this a sign of rebellion, or are you trying to impress us and those around you?”

Asya caught herself holding her breath again as her dark eyes focused for too long on those three veiled pools of molten gold. Her mind had recoiled, not with fright but with something akin to disgust, or maybe unease was a better word. While her eyes took in the physicality of Ilayah her mind raced to catch up with herself. The Archon appearing while she wasn’t paying attention had startled her and left her open to far too much. The voice that had been heard without truly having touched her ears. The knowledge of her name. It felt like a violation. Asya was well aware that Archons were psionics but the Romans didn’t really have nor did they endorse psionics of their own. The act of interacting with telepaths therefore came unnaturally to most Romans, of which Asya was no exception. Facing the ethereal looking alien she realized that she was being tested, weighted and measured in ways she would have no idea of knowing what would be the right outcome. The Archon was looking for weaknesses Asya assumed. Her training kicked in and to her implant she triggered an acute stress repression protocol. Functionally the implant triggered the release of an inhibitory neurotransmitter which reduced her anxiety. Not that Asya understood how it worked, she simply knew that triggering the protocol would make her calm down and come back into focus.

Asya relaxed her shoulders and did a slight theatrical look down at her clothes while spreading her arms out along her sides ever so slightly before letting them fall back in a relaxed manner. “No, I’m a decade out of being a teenager so no rebellion. It is… proper to partake in local fashion. I also liked feeling well dressed for the occasion.” Asya’s voice had started playful, stuttered with uncertainty and ended on an honest but flat sounding note. It did however quickly regain its usual friendly pitch. “I quite like the detailing on the chest. Do you dislike it, Lady Ilayah? I have to admit your own clothes are rather beautiful - though unusual to Roman eyes.”

Ilayah went up to Asya - one might consider a step too close - and looked. Asya could not tell if she was looking at her clothes as if to make up her mind, or Asya herself. “Some of us in Mazekya tend to gardens of hundreds of thousands of flowers. Some spend their time counting them, but we mostly use it as exercise to keep our wits sharp. A dead flower is a sign of many to soon be dead. Dressing oneself in the sign flowers… That’s a sign of reveling in the material.” Ilayah said the word with a sting of scorn.

Ilayah continued to look at Asya. “But perhaps you’re not reveling? No… You’re trying to fit in, aren’t you? Quite something, from someone already so unremarkable. Simple snacks, simple drinks. This is a reflection of your people, but says nothing of yourself. Perhaps you like it that way. Perhaps you don’t. Asya Maurer…” Ilayah stared for a moment, before continuing. “You’re not afraid, correct? Or do you need to not be afraid?”

Asya didn’t take a step back as Ilayah pressed close and she stood her ground with her back straight. Her eyes tried to remain on Ilayah’s golden orbs but the third eye was distracting in its unfamiliarity. I’m a daughter of the Union, and I’m not afraid, she thought. Loud and clear but she wouldn’t verbalize something so base in front of another. Ilayah could settle with reading that, she thought, since peeping seemed acceptable to her.

Instead Asya spoke with an even tone as she ignored encroachment of her personal space. “Flowers symbolize how fleeting things are in life...” Asya was aware that Ilayah spoke with a heavy religious significance. She was well aware of the Mazekyan religion, at least to the extent that it was understood by outsiders. The Neanderthal practiced it, while Clanners were generally and thankfully usually more down to business when interacted with. The full extent of the Mazekyan religion, from a Roman perspective, boiled down to a whole lot of esoteric nonsense. The finer details were usually boiled down into ‘Mazekyans simply dislikes greed’, which made things workable but it was an oversimplification that bordered on intellectual dishonesty.

Asya tilted her head ever so slightly and her lips slowly crept back to form a thin lopsided smile. Her eyes looked straight at the Archon’s two eyes while ignoring the third. Her tone, when she spoke, was not accusatory but bordering on friendly teasing. “You’re something of an insolent woman, aren’t you, Ilayah?”

Ilayah held little hint of emotion as she looked out the glass to the water. Schools of sea creatures seemingly gathered and dissipated like slow breathing. “I’m sorry. We understand that not all things in the universe are so easily explained. But we in Mazekya keep our guard up for a reason. The Lareshians,” she said with a sense of scorn, like the name of a long lost enemy. “… They got complacent. They stopped striving for better. They in the end rather work with the forces of darkness and revel in debauchery; desire for money, love, ownership. And for their arrogance, their pure desire for all, saw them fall in a cosmic instant. And we both represent entities which helped in that fall, and we have both… cloistered ourselves. The Romans have put up many psionic barriers over the years since with perhaps the understanding that it will keep them safe. Mazekya, similarly, has its own goals which we continue to align with. In the end, most people found a hatred for their once declared masters and had done much to destroy their influence, though the nexus still represents their greatest support of the Monad.”

Ilayah turned quickly to Asya. “Though you’re not fully informed of all that happened in the great dissolution, for your benefit in your nation, or simple lack of want to know. We both hold to our secrets. Yet perhaps you’ll learn how much we’re wiling to share. Now, let us discuss this negotiation. These sea creatures are beginning to bore.” And with a twist of her head, the schools of fish seemingly disappeared from view.

"Huh," was the only sound Asya made as she stood, her weight on one leg, and watched as the marine life seemed to dart away at speed. Leaving only the empty deep blue outside. Impressive parlor trick, she thought in an impressed cadence, hopefully loud enough that it would mask the slight unease she felt at watching such displays of psionics. She turned her head away from the view and faced the Archon once more. Giving a slight nod of her head she looked at the veiled woman as her shoulders eased up the tension that had lingered there. “Don’t get me started on the Lareshians, I can rattle off grievances for hours.” Asya spoke with a markedly more friendly tone, trying to build some form of report now that she felt that the ice was broken.

“I have to admit that I had never imagined myself here, talking to you that is. If I'm allowed to jest then us diplomats are taught that the great civility between Mazekya and the Union rests upon the silence between us.” She smiled a friendly smile and waved her hand dismissively in front of her chest as if to brush away her words. “Not saying that these talks aren’t welcome. They very much are. Be it just a year ago that colleagues of mine were begging for just these talks. Circumstances were different then, but it worked out all the same, did it not?”

Ilayah opened her veil to allow Asya to see her face. She knew curiosity was on her mind. Overall, Ilayah could be considered unassuming but attractive: a dark tan skin, with black hair tucked within. When she blinked, the golden eyes were never synced: either the third eye would blink, or her two normal ones would. She showed little emotion either way, as the golden eyes held no pupil to grasp where she even truly looked. “The Romans know well that silence with Mazekya means peace. It allows continued movement and trade between us. And while the Neanderthal Clans move on either side, we believe order had been maintained in the aftermath of that most-recent conflict. We believed at the time that a great threat had emerged from Aruthia. That they threatened to destroy the Romans while they were busy. So, we put our thumb on the scale. Our Feudatories were quick to act, and now the Morian Traverse is a ruin worth little for decades to come. How quickly subjects can act when favor is to be gained.” Ilayah spoke with the softest of smiles, a rare sign of expression. Her voice was harsher than her face, seemingly wizened over the years.

“When the Aruthians floundered in the traverse, they quickly made enemies of themselves. The agent of the Demiurge had lost all support, and had to flounder all political machinations. And now, only their False-Emperor currently holds the reigns. A state in chaos. But, now other states continue to move. Old enemies from war past. Thaull. Perhaps Azha. Perhaps they will let bygones rest. But we know well that old grievances come back quickly in this realm. Some desire or promise of age old glories, as if it achieves something greater. Tens of billions were lost in the great dissolution. Billions were lost in the Traverse. Billions more soon… We believe the Romans to be uncorrupted by the agents of Darkness, if only from arrogance or want for greater purpose. We’ll let you decide where the Romans stand. But Mazekya has had a long standing relationship with the Romans. It was never friendly. Perhaps never will be. But it is better to stand with someone you understand, what motivates them. And currently, we both stand alone. Aruthia quickly learned what happens in such a stance. Their Nation is as alone as their False-Emperor is.” Ilayah once more softly smiled, looking at Asya.

Asya tried not to stare at the unveiled Archon, but she was only human and her dark eyes lingered on the unfamiliar laid bare. Her smile showed teeth and her eyelids sunk to hood her gaze. “Uncorrupted by Darkness? You have a way with words, I'll give you that, Ilayah.” Her smile faltered ever so slightly and she did a bow with her head that only reached her neck. “It may not mean much and it may not be anything you’ve expected or wanted. But I want to say thank you. Thank you to Mazekya. Not only for weighting the scales in the Traverse, but for all things before that. For the silence and for all the things you never did. Our nations may never have been friends but there were many times during the long war of the dissolution - when we were at our weakest and any lesser neighbour could just have chosen to walk straight in. Mazekya never took advantage when advantage was all our other neighbours sought. For that I thank your people on the behalf of mine.”

Asya’s eyes were back on Ilayah’s and there was a deep honesty in their dark brown depths. No one is coming - that was the sentiment, both culturally and professionally, that she had been taught. It had been hammered into the Roman psyche from a time when the galaxy had seemed to stand by and watch them bleed. And later, when the only things getting inside the Union were smuggled through Ithaxian space on Guild Barges at exorbitant prices, it had only become more deeply ingrained. Friends had been few as not to say nonexistent. Cold and cruel had been and still were common descriptors of the Romans. And they could be utterly ruthless to those beyond their borders yes, but they had always had reason to! Yet they loved their own with a ferocity that could hardly be measured. Hadn’t Ambassador Kovač shot himself in the middle of the Nexus Parliament when, acting on faulty information, he had believed that Inzali had fallen? It had been an act of madness, grief, anger and shame all at once, but no one had truly questioned why he had done it. They understood. Asya understood. And the Mazekyan neutrality had been responsible for billions of Roman lives. For that she had to say her thanks when now given such an opportunity for if she didn’t she wouldn’t have been able to live with the shame. Not now that she stood where she stood. Face to face with an Archon, deep under the ocean of all places.

“The last war… this opportunistic storm whipped up by Azha. It cost us dearly, even if things could have been worse. The reports out of the Ithaxian League on what the Thaullen did… It's not a good time to stand without allies in the galaxy. We know that and I understand that you see it as well. What do you want of us, Ilayah?” Asya paused to look into the Archon’s molten gold eyes. It was infuriating in a sense that she couldn’t feel or read Ilayah’s face in any ways beyond what her muscles gave away. Yet those eyes were beautiful in a sense that was hard to describe.

Ilayah looked away for a moment, then back at Asya. “We are pleased by the response, if even flattered. What we want is a formal alliance with the United Roman Reich, included with it free movement within, mostly through the Neanderthal Clans. You have already dealt with them and Yazata numerous times. But as a formality, movement via our feudatories and the Archon Fleet to outlying systems to act in defense. As to be broadly beneficial, the Romans would be allowed free movement within Mazekya outside of Ain Soph, Ibrem, and Ghemore. Obviously respect on both sides are to be maintained. If our feudatories believe the Romans to be in some violation, we will have to review the alliance- same for the Romans, if our subjects prove an issue to you. We do not believe our societies will intersect too much outside of the Clans, and your recent dealings with the Neanderthals, or possible future relations with the Karatur or Telteki.”

Ilayah turned her head, seemingly taking in Asya’s own features for but a moment. “Beyond that, we are open to anything the Romans may suggest. We do not believe aggression against foes to come from this alliance but… this realm has always been in flux between order and chaos. We consider now to be a time of order, yet how quickly the table turns back to the chaos of the dissolution can only be predicted. Either way, we believe if we stand together, that little can threaten us openly.”

Asya blinked and tried not to look too stunned as if she wasn’t aware that she could be read as an open book when in the presence of Ilayah. Those terms, the proposal, it was surprisingly simple and straight forward, Asya thought. It felt almost genuine, though she didn’t truly know what she had expected to begin with. So little made sense to her about these developments. Why would Mazekya even bother to reach out now, unless there was something that the Romans had missed? Or maybe it all made sense and she was simply not in the need to know. She nodded, her hand absently touching the floral pattern on the right side of her suit jacket. “Those are agreeable terms, Lady Ilayah. Our long working relationship with the Neanderthal Clans have always been valued and I see no reason why that shouldn’t continue. I can readily agree to the respectful free movement between our star systems.” She paused, as if making a display of remembering something. “We have the core systems, as we say, Euzkia, Chairo, Bosalma, Levitra and Chati. While there’s no need to block travel to or from those systems strict travel routes would need to be respected. Landing on the habitable worlds of those systems however is probably going to be banned for regular civilians. We’ll make sure that the facilitation of trade and the movement of goods is ensured of course.”
She looked from Ilayah and to the ocean beyond the glass. “It is our wish, just as you, that no aggression comes from this. But I’m sure that this meeting wouldn’t be happening if such wishes were to come true.” Asya turned back and held out an open hand towards Ilayah. “If Mazekya will come to the defence of the Roman people, then so will we come to the defence of Mazekya.”

Ilayah spoke plainly and simply. “Dark forces always muster against the will of the Monad. Victory will either come to the forces of the Monad, or the Demiurge will plunge us into an eternity of darkness. Let the Romans stand with us against the dark, and we will stand with them. We have stood alone against the dark for millennia. And now, more than ever, we must not stand alone.” Ilayah then looked at the hand which Asya offered, before looking back at her. “It was good to get to know you, Asya. We will surely meet in the future.” She then took Asya’s hand, not shaking, but simply feeling it in her hands.

Asya could feel a strange numbness as her and Ilayah’s hands touched. A chill ran down her spine as if all warmth had been sucked out of the room and something felt against her temples. Not a pressure but something akin to the rumbling gnawing of bone against bone. She couldn’t describe it if she had tried. It took every ounce of concentration to not let anything show. The muscles of her face were slightly tense but she still managed a genuine smile. Her mind focused on the sealing of the deal. “The pleasure was all mine, Lady Ilayah.” There was a slight hollowness to her tone from dealing with the uncanny feeling. She wasn’t lying but more so spoke out of pure formality.

Ilayah once more softly smiled, her eyes seemingly aglow. “We are in agreement. And now, I must depart Khiikho Prime. This place serves me no purpose. We will undoubtedly talk once more. And when we do, it is unlikely to be as pleasant as this.” Ilayah once more veiled her face, having the deep blue fabric dim her face to being only a shadow, save those golden eyes. She then turned, walking softly, the fabric and cloak she wore seemingly making it look as if she glided over the floor. Asya then heard once more the echoing of Ilayah in her head, as if it need reminding once more: ”We will meet again.”

As the room’s bronze clad double doors slid close behind Ilayah Asya was left alone. At first she simply stared at the closed door on the opposite end of the room. Her mind slowly contemplated their relatively short meeting all things considered. She walked over to a seating area and sank down onto a low round black leather armchair. The room was eerily quiet. The sealife had returned to swim as normal outside the curved armorglass. Asya looked at the low table in front of her and realized that it had been prepared for the possibility of her and Ilayah to have sat down. There were square plates, rustic beige and oversized for the contents on them. Small simple delicacies and candies. The low quantity on the too large plates made it all look intentionally sparse, almost ascetic. A matching beige vase with a narrow neck sat at the center of the table and in it was a simple leafless twig. Asya realized that someone on the staff had tried to make a display in line with Mazekyan sensibilities. However it had succeeded she didn’t know.

“Status on the Archon?” Asya asked, opening a com channel through her implant to the security officer monitoring the Ilayah’s presence. “The lady Ilayah just cleared the surface.” replied the same bored voice that she had spoken to before the meeting. “She’ll make her way to the space elevator and… the ascent should start within four minutes.”

“Alright, that’s good,” agreed Asya while nodding despite no one being there to see her. The unease feeling that had lingered after Ilayah’s touch had eased and Asya leaned forward over the low table. She reached out and picked up a round rosy pink hard candy that she held with two fingers before taking it in her mouth. She had expected something solid but it crumbled as if melting once inside her mouth. It had a sweet fruity flavour with a distinct sour tang to it. Nothing overwhelming but very enjoyable. She reached into the internal chest pocket on her suit jacket and pulled out a small metallic data cylinder. She felt around the sides of the low table and found the connector-jack with slots capable of taking data cylinders and data chits. She pressed the cylinder into one of the available slots while pulling out the rolled up connector-jack wire before plugging it into her Neurolink. The data that popped up on her internal HUD was the very sparse orders that she had originally been given. Then there was a locked file with further instructions only to be opened after the meeting was concluded. Asya unlocked the file and brought up the new orders but she wasn’t surprised at what she read. Most of it was a long list of requested medical tests and blood samples. She was to turn herself in at the nearest available grade-A hospital or above and subject herself to the requested tests. The raw data from her Neurolink were to be extracted before it could compress itself after the usual 24 hour mark. She was even to undergo a brain scan and a psych evaluation. Asya copied the medical test list over to her local memory buffer and disconnected the wire and unplugged the data cylinder. Packing everything up back as it had been.

She understood that, apart from having secured a remarkable historic alliance, she was also now of the utmost interest to the diplomatic corps. Being the only person in recent memory to have had direct personal contact with an Archon. She wasn’t sure what could be learned from doing the tests if anything. But if nothing else she supposed that she would at least hopefully learn that she hadn’t been turned into some psionic sleeper agent.

Asya let herself relax for a few more moments before standing back up. She took one final look at the deep blue ocean surrounding her before leaving the room. Once outside, in a lavish corridor with black marble floor and red walls with coral motifs, she met up with her security detail that had been waiting outside in absolute boredom she was sure. The man closest nodded with an appreciative smile as he spoke. “Ms. Maurer, managed to get all we wanted out that Ilayah chick, did we?”

Asya chuckled and tilted her head. “Yeah, one could say that…” Her voice trailed off as she raised an eyebrow at the man. Her gaze became distant, her attention turning inward as something finally clicked. The bored voice from earlier. “You shouldn’t know that…” she mumbled, more to herself than to the man standing before her. The security guard gave her a questioning look but Asya was already somewhere else. She slipped into her implant and reconnected herself to the local net, using her security clearance to pull up the communication logs concerning Ilayah’s movements to and from the planet. Her eyes flicked over the entries. Archon. Archon. Archon. The quick search gave a simple answer. There was no name. No Ilayah. Not once. Asya stared at the log for a long moment. No one had told the security detail her name. She knew, without checking, that even if she pulled up the security footage there would be no interaction of Ilayah telling her name to the security detail! And definitely not to the security officer that had been monitoring her elevator ride! Asya slowly looked back at the man in front of her. Something cold settled in her stomach. What even were these Archons?